In december I flew to ATL with a very tech savy skipper that made an upgrade calculator with Microsoft Excel. He based the F/O’s at 37 yrs average and current skippers at 51 average. He also based it on zero growth(which is factual for the next 10 years) and a reasonable fixed amount of command courses each year and taking in to account fixed retirements at the age of 61. The outcome was quite shocking.
If you joined Virgin around the start of 2023 going up you’re looking at an upgrade time of at least 12/13 years. And that’s WITHOUT any downturn. But if there’s only 1 year of zero command and still no growth it would easily jump to 15/16 years. We tried loads of scenario’s but the only thing that would really move the needle is people retiring around 55 years, anything else is minimum 12/13 years,even slow growth.
I’ve been here a year and a half and I don’t really have anything negative to say about Virgin, in fact it’s been refreshing to see an airline do things differently than a major. At this airline they kind of like leave you alone and leave you be as opposed to a Major I was with before where they’re looking over your shoulder 24/7.
I would strongly recommend joining Virgin if you’re looking for a nice stable airline with great colleagues and a very good training department, however you need to be prepared for command times of 13 years or longer and no growth in the next 10 years.
cheers.