Originally Posted by
chrisreedrules
I knew 2 base announcements were coming. However I was personally skeptical about Philly even though I guess on paper it makes the most sense for the flying PSA does... ORF was a given. If you look on travel planner and see the amount of flights PSA will be operating from ORF to the hubs and how much “through-flying” and funneling through PHL will be done by ORF crews by the end of the year that one was obvious.
PHL though... I wonder how this will impact Piedmont's recruiting efforts. PHL is all they have (for now).
AA fleet planning doesn’t really worry about WO recruitment issues. With AAs expansion of routes to new markets and Impending drawdown of AAs E190 fleet it makes sense to add more 70+ seat flying to PHL.
Piedmont still has 4-5 month waits to get folks into class between interview and Indoc. Piedmont already competes with republic for recruitment in PHL but intra WO competition now that PSAs flow is increasing will put pressure on PDT management to increase pay and benefits. Current hiring (20/month) is covering barely attrition as they try to expand the jet fleet. If Piedmont opens CLT or DCA they’ll gain other interested parties who wish to join the company and live/be line holders in those bases which should offset the recruitment losses due to PSA competition in PHL.
Everyone keeps speculating about a Piedmont merger with Envoy but Outside of equipment differences (and that Piedmont was supposed to get 170s as their new jet as part of the long term plan) a PSA/PDT merger makes more sense than Envoy/PDT. Shared training center in CLT, consolidated payroll operation in MDT, flight ops management transitioning back and forth between both and soon to be shared jet bases. Old timers at PDT recall the brief period where PSA and PDT were called other things and PDT owned PSA before US Airways acquired both as their express carriers.
ORF was a Piedmont base back in the day and A year ago folks in Management at PDT were talking about some nice hangar space for a mx base in ORF and after PSA announcement of the mx base there there was some discussion about a consolidated base with PDT and PSA. It would be real interesting if that happened.
The jets that Piedmont is receiving have an estimated 4-6 years of life left in them. PDTs path will be determined by where AA decides it’s additional aircraft will be coming from. AA is likely determining that right now. Piedmont has 7000-8000 employees, of which less than 10% make up its pilot group so there’s a lot more to consider than just pilots and airplanes when AA decides it’s future.