Question about upgrade times

murl

murl

New Member
First of all I am not trying to start an argument about "this guy shouldn't even be there" I am just asking a question about low time pilots at the regionals in general. I have read many post on that and know how many of you feel about the "reduced mins." The question I have is when these guys hired with 600TT actually have the seniority to upgrade will they be able to do so?
 
I have heard that it's not uncommon for pilots that were hired with low time to delay their upgrade due to not meeting ATP mins.
 
Pretty easy to figure out, at least if we knew what minimums were for upgrade, and how many hours they fly a year. As an example, if an airline required 3000 hours TT for CA upgrade, the pilot was hired with 600, and he averages 800 hours a year, he would be eligible for upgrade based on TT after 3 years of flying ( (3000-600)/800=3 ). Now we just need accurate numbers...
 
if you are going somewhere with a 2yr upgrade and fly 800 hrs a year you'll have 1600 hrs just from the job, plus whatever you had prior. You need 1500 for the ATP (though some airlines require more than that for upgrade).
 
What are the upgrade times for those hiring low timers such as Xjet/Eagle? I know these are not the only ones.
 
SkyWest upgrade mins are 2500 TT, 1000 in a crew environment (121 or 135 & I believe this needs to be turbine time. Not sure though and too lazy to look it up. Though it is unusual to have crew time in a non-turbine plane.)
 
As of right now at PCL, if you have low time, you're gonna be in the right seat for a while. You need 3000TT to upgrade in the CRJ here. They've been talking about reducing the mins, but I haven't seen any hard evidence that they will. Quite the opposite in fact, since in the last check airman class both the FAA and one of the standards guys for the airline said "no" to the reduced mins question. I got hired right around 1000TT, and even I'll have the seniority to bid CA before I have the hours.

That being said, it could change at a moments notice. Look at XJT for an example. Their mins are ATP mins, but used to most of the guys that upgraded would be around the 2-2 1/2 year mark before upgrading. Recently, I've heard guys are gonna be upgrading right at mins over there. Then you could see the reverse happen, a la Colgan in the Saab. I think a lot of the guys over there are saying upgrade times have slowed down quite a bit.
 
The only things I can think of are two different aircraft types and at XJT you used to upgrade with a LOT more than 1500TT. If it weren't for the 3000TT, I'd probably be close to four stripes by the end of this year. We just had FORTY CAs slots on the latest vacancy, and that's before any slots from CAs moving bases are counted. We're averaging about a CA leaving a day right now. Some weeks it goes higher than that. There's a post about once or twice a day on the company message board saying "see ya" from CAs in all bases. The FO attrition seems to have slowed a decent bit, though.
 
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