This thread has gone a bit quiet.
Any Virgin flyers know whether there is any truth in the rumour of a possible pilot recruitment drive this summer? Personally, the large order for 787s makes me very excited!
Scroggs, anyone?
Cheers
ST
There won't be much movement for a while. There is another A340-300 coming, as mentioned above, and the airline is a little short on the B744. These two factors might mean around 40 new pilots this year - which is about the size of the hold pool, as far as I know. Undoubtedly some in the hold pool will no longer be available, and it will need to be refilled, so I would anticipate some recruiting this summer - but not in the kind of numbers that I would get
too excited about!
The recruiting for the B787 and A380 (and possibly B777 if the 787 is delayed too much) won't begin in earnest for another 18 months or so, I would guess. As yet, there is no statement on how many of these aircraft will be additions to the fleet and how many will replace older frames, so the net requirement for new pilots is difficult to judge. The airline was also due to announce an additional order for aircraft to bolster/replace some of the LGW B744 fleet about now, but that seems to have slid to the right.
It's being reported today in some business sites that SRB and a team of Virgin executives is in Dubai right now trying to raise capital for a potential bmi British Midland buy-out. How serious or imminent this is I have no idea, but any move in that direction will have major ramifications for recruitment: ie, it will stop until all the manpower issues of any merger/takeover are resolved.
Interesting times.