From the pilot’s perspective, I think the concept of flow is great because even a clean record with all the boxes checked doesn’t guarantee you’ll ever get called for an interview. Contrarily, the fact that regional’s have taken roughly ~50% of the flying away from mainline over the past few decades makes the concept of regionals essentially a B-scale and byproduct of mainline giving up scope for cash. The fact that flow even exists at all is stupid; AA should be doing all their own flying.

That said, from the company’s perspective, I also think flow is also stupid. Why take the discretion out of the hiring process? I know OP was trying to humor us, but it’s weird that AA is the only major carrier that has a pathway program without any interview.

There are a lot of great people flowing to AA, but there are also some people that’d make you stare in wonderment as they would never get hired off the street at any LCC/Major/Legacy and they’re ending up at AA. Seems bad for AA to welcome in a bunch of undesirables that served out their sentence at ENY/PSA/PDT.