In the rules for Escalation it says;

"each squad must contain all ships and upgrade cards from the previous squad. Ships from the previous round must keep all equipped upgrade cards, and these cards may not be “transferred” to a different ship."

In this instance; am guessing "Ship" refers to both Pilot and ship? or can you take Academy TIE and swap out for Wampa?

'ship; in x-wing means a specific individual combination of pilot and craft.

One Academy Pilot is a different ship from another Academy Pilot, and Maarek Stele in a Defender is a different ship from Maarek Stele in a TIE Advanced.

awesome thank you; i tried search through the Rule to find the term "ship" but it come up with a lot of hits.