Originally Posted by TransWorld

From the AA forum:

The 6 weeks hiatus is due to the schoolhouse being jammed. In addition to new hires and CA upgrades, they have a bunch of MD80 (and maybe some others) pilots that need to get ready to fly something else.

Makes sense they waited until after the summer peak to do this.

My guess (no basis other than an educated guess) they may be trying to put a thousand through, in addition to what is normal.

They are going to have to increase the pipeline capacity before the big wave of retirements hits!