Originally Posted by
nicholasblonde
There is seemingly a discrepancy on the ACP profile for AE..."most junior captain hire date" for tprop & jet fleets are listed as (I believe) '01 or '00...but in the "news/remarks" section at the top it says "15-20 upgrades happening per month, mostly on jets." Are those 15-20 per month all 6 and 7 year FOs??? That can't be right.
Either way, if any guys have info, I'd be interested in seeing how things play out with AE...it would seem that a captain at AE might have a dilemma at this point--stay with AE and cross ur fingers for an AA mainline job in the uncertain future, stay at AE with a good schedule til retirment, or jump ship and go to a non-AA major since you obviously have +1000 turbine PIC after all those years at AE.
AE has been offering 15-20 CA slots/mo in the recent past, but as evilatp said, it is mainly shuffling around CAs from props-jets or base transfers without backfilling those slots. As for the AE CAs, I would guess about 75% of them would prefer to stay put at AE for their career. The most junior CA has about 7yrs seniority, most are 15+yrs seniority. At that point they have great schedules and no desire to leave for another airline. Even flowing to AA, many AE CAs do not wish to go. It is a definite problem for AE because it raises our average seniority, which means pilot labor costs are much higher than other regionals we are competing against. There are still about 300 FOs between the current 5/00 Jr CA DOH and the 1/1/04 DOH. There are about 200 flowbacks returning to AA in the next year or two, so that will create some upgrade opportunities, but after that it will remain roughly stagnant (5-6yr upgrade maybe) unless something changes.