Air Canada Recruitment

[pilotatlast]

Any guesses when they are likely to recruit Pilots again?

[YHZChick]

Hahahaha.
HaHaHaHa.
HAHAHAHA!!!!

They are fighting lay-offs. I wouldn't hold your breath for recruitment.

[UB6IB9]

yhzchick...typical canadian aviation attitude!

well to answer the original posters question. your guess is as good as anybodys. my friend got on with jazz last year (somewhere near bottom 5 dash8 f/o in the company).....was kicked out of yvr to yyc.....was warned of possible layoffs.....now he's back in yvr and jazz is...well was......hiring a little while ago.

anybody's guess.

good luck.

cheers

[sepia]

Anything you here on here would be purely speculation at this point. With that in mind, here's my speculative take on it.

Right now they have somewhere around 50 guys out on leaves. If they thought they needed more people, they wouldn't have offered the leaves. Within the last 6 months they've also offered early retirement packages too. Again, they wouldn't offer these if they needed the bodies.

That said, this is aviation, and things change very quickly. Its not uncommon for airlines to hire all the way up until they lay off. It's also not uncommon to have guys on lay off right up until they hire again. So just because there's guys on leave now doesn't mean they'll all be brought back before the next new hire arrives.

I think there's two big catches right now. First, the contract negotiations. The results of these could massively sway the crewing requirements. Even seemingly small changes to the draconian reserve rules could require more crews. That said, I don't think the reserve rules have seen much change in my lifetime. Second, fly until you die guys having some form of luck at the courts. Right now as it stands, there's over 100 retirements a year for the foreseeable future. If the retirement age were to change tomorrow morning, some percentage of that 100+/yr would elect to stay on. What percentage would walk down greedy lane and stay on is an unknown. Certainly though, the number would be less than the forecast 100+/yr. This would not only affect everyone on the property negatively, but would also slow the need for new hires to replace those retiring out.

There's always the rumors of more planes too. Every company I've worked at since my first instructing gig, all the way through the next 5 jobs all had "something coming". It's the oldest trick in the book. The current ___RUMOUR___ is additional 330's to be added to the fleet. The rumour before that one was the return of 767-200's from the desert. The 767-200's are still in the desert.

If I were placing bets, I would say that hiring won't happen until the 787 shows on the bids. That's not going to happen for awhile yet. So without that causing a massive train up effort, while one fleet transitions to another, it will probably just remain status quo. I'm so far removed from the people that make the decisions it's laughable though. So definitely don't take my uninformed opinion to the bank.

While you're waiting for them to resume hiring again, it's a great time to analyze their last hiring wave. Try and look at what made people successful. What companies did they hire from, how did they select people from those companies. If you're not a company they hired extensively from, would you benefit from trying to get to one? Take some time and learn about a hiring process run by professionally trained HR people. It isn't sitting with the chief pilot trying to say the right things. This is multi tiered. Psych tests, cognitive tests, behavioral interview questions. Your funny one liner that won you your last job will score you out of pool here. So it's definitely something that you'll need to understand to be successful at. It's never a bad time to learn about something like that.

Good luck in the next round. Hopefully I'm wrong and the phones start ringing tomorrow.

[ScudRunner08]

yhzchick...typical canadian aviation attitude!

well to answer the original posters question. your guess is as good as anybodys. my friend got on with jazz last year (somewhere near bottom 5 dash8 f/o in the company).....was kicked out of yvr to yyc.....was warned of possible layoffs.....now he's back in yvr and jazz is...well was......hiring a little while ago.

anybody's guess.

good luck.



Lol Jazz is not Air Canada. And both will be going through contract negotiations soon and I expect layoffs at both this year.

[YHZChick]

Thank you ScudRunner.
And Jazz is profitable, whereas Big Red is not.
And Jazz doesn't operate under the constraints that AC does...

If the guy had asked if WJ was hiring, the question would not have been so humourous. (Though even their ground schools have been pushed back/delayed repeatedly from my understanding)

[sepia]

YHZgirl:

Jazz is only profitable at the expense of AC. Only a true fool couldn't see this. It's not like the few charters that Jazz does props up the otherwise unprofitable CPA. The heavily one sided capacity purchase agreement was for the sole benefit of trying to launch the Jazz IPO as stable investment with guaranteed returns. This has obviously run it's course, there no longer needs to be a punitive CPA.

When the CPA expires there will be no need to renew at the same insane rates. I can't imagine a world in which Jazz will be the sole bidder. Both for domestic and transborder flying. This are going to change, they have to.

You'll have each and every one of the American tier II's fighting for the transborder flying. ComAir, I'm sure would love to pull their RJ's out of the desert and have a bidding war with you for the transborder stuff. These American carriers are already super lean. They've only survived because they've been able to do it cheaper than anyone else. Jazz hasn't been forced to remove the fat like these companies have. Have you ever looked into what the US tier II's cost vs Jazz? If they're allowed to bid, Jazz is going to have an extreme eye opener.

On the domestic front you'll be fighting at the very minimum porter. They've got brand new planes, no legacy costs, and a lower cost structure from top to bottom. There's lots of companies with 705 planes that would love a slice of the Canadian pie too. Air Labrador on the East, Pasco on the West, Calm air in the centre. I don't think it would take much to get Georgian or CMA to get their operations up to 705 regs.

Looking at the ability of Jazz management to find work outside of the CPA in the last year should be a sobering prospect too. I don't think I need to list the failed attempts.

Be careful about laughing at the financial wreckage of the people who pay your bills, lest you join us. We're too intertwined for one to fail without taking the other with them.

I do recognize the quality of service that Jazz brings to AC. There's no doubt that Jazz does it better than Colgan, or ComAir etc. I hope that when the CPA comes up for renewal some weight is placed on quality of service, and not solely on price. I believe that would be the only playing field on which the current version of Jazz can compete.

All of this doom and gloom said. I hoped not to insult anyone at Jazz or drag their name through the mud. I've always found your crews to be nothing but professional peers. I sincerely hope that we continue to work together in a mutually exclusive way. I only posted this in an attempt to enlighten a terribly short sighted post from YHZgirl. I hope that you can all see it for exactly that and not read anything more into it.

See ya in the customs line.:ok:

[YHZChick]

sepia...
my ONLY beef with AC is the level of customer service. Too many times I've seen pax with flights delayed or cxx'd, with little to no explanation, and occassionally, being outright lied to. If the people on the very front line could learn to a)say "I'm sorry", and b) communicate, the perception the public has of AC would be entirely different.

IMO, and you're free to disagree...
- AC should have never spun off the profitable sectors (Areoplan, Jazz, etc).
- AC should have never bought out Canadian.
- AC has done very well given the degree to which the government has, and continues to find new ways, to tie their hands.

I don't want to see AC fail (though I know plenty of folks in the general travelling population who would delight in that from their bad experiences). As great as WestJet is, I don't for a second think they could maintain their level of service and their fares in a competitive-free environment, and I know they can't provide the coverage that AC can.

As for:
Be careful about laughing at the financial wreckage of the people who pay your bills, lest you join us. We're too intertwined for one to fail without taking the other with them.

AC doesn't pay my bills.

My initial post was in response to a question about AC hiring. I don't see, in their current situation, and with their current contract negotiations, as that happening any time soon.

My second post was in response to someone who threw Jazz into the mix, as if Jazz was interchangeable with AC.

Where you got from that that I am anti-Air Canada, or a Jazz employee, is beyond me.