I was having this conversation with a mainline recruiter the other week. AA's pilot group is going to dramatically change over the next 10 years based on the open door flow through policy. The WOs are so desperate for pilots they are scooping up almost anyone and relying on the training process to weed them out. The personality, work ethic and background selection criteria has become much more relaxed than it was 5-10 years ago. Fact of the matter is that AA has an obligation to accept all of them. The wave of "resume refugees" is going to increase. AA will have the task of weeding them out through training and their probationary period. The number of bad apple incidents and training failures is going to increase as the bottom barrel candidates start to flow in to AA. Delta and United still hold a barrier with their prefferential interview system, retaining tools to deny employment to these less desirable candidates as they see fit.

There is no denying that the WOs today are taking relatively low experienced pilots, forcing them into upgrade, and having them learn as PIC as opposed to years with a mentor group of experienced pilots. IF time to flow decreases, these folks are going to stroll into AA with less operational decision making. Good or Bad, American is going to be a remarkably different place to work than it is today.