Originally Posted by snippercr

PSA street hiring captains is only going to hurt our cause more. I know there are a lot of people here who are avoid PSA on principle but if they start hiring street captains, that is only going to speed up the churn of our guys there. That then gives AAG even cheaper feed. Have 18 year CAs flying 50 seaters or 1st year CAs flying 76 seaters? Also, we still have yet to hear the details of the post-SOC flow through that PSA will get.

In order to go from 2200 (fact, recently seniority list) total pilots to 1500 total pilots, we have to lose 700. 20/month to flow and lets assume a modest 20 to elsewhere is 40/month. The numbers going elsewhere may be higher but we are actually hiring people and that number is, bizarrely, going up from 2-3 people/class to 6-7/class. Again, what is the retention of those guys? Losing 40/month means we will get to 1500 pilots in about 18 months.

However, this assumes the flow continues to work, we do not lose anymore aircraft (20 more to PDT anyone?), AA keeps hiring (SLI? PBS? D/I integration?), and that once we reach 1500 pilots, we can suddenly start hiring to have attrition = hiring. In order to market "5 years new hire to AA" you have to actually have it happen. It's like saying "Upgrade time at ZYX airline is __ years" - that is just what the most junior guy took.

As you said, the next 18 months are going to be painful. The pain stopping after 18 months requires a lot of uncertain things to happen that this company just does not have a good track record of following. IF, however, we do not lose any more airplanes, the flow has 18 months of working solid so they can say "Hey look, past 2 years each month we have consistently flown 20-30 guys over to AA", and maybe we can not only NOT lose anymore aircraft but gain some (175 options, some of our 145s back), then yes we can attract people, stay "right sized" and all get out of this disease. Slurpee machines wouldnt hurt either.