Originally Posted by
Bassman1985
Fair enough, but none of that stops or even slows the retirements coming of the top of AA. When push comes to shove and they can't find enough qualified pilots, which do you think AAG is more likely to park? An A-319 that requires fewer block hours to move a certain number of people per day, or an E-145 that requires more? My money is on the tiny, gas-guzzling, hated-by-pax 50-seater. Up-gauging is the business model of the future for domestic operations. Eventually you can't up-gauge any more and you are forced to bring your outsourced flying back in-house. Just a matter of time in our current environment.
Oh, they'll park the smaller RJ's for sure, but that isn't a freebie as they lose critical feed and thus market share. But, you can't get blood out of a rock, but for now, they have hundreds of small RJ's (and even turboprops) they can scrap and that's a couple of thousand pilots worth of contraction which will take a couple of years, so still time to kick the can.
Not good for the flow though.