Originally Posted by
dera
Your logic has a serious flaw.
Pilot flowing costs AA the same first year salary as an OTS hire.
Pilot NOT flowing costs AA higher regional rate, plus the same new hire rate for the OTS guy who they hired.
Pilot flowing can be replaced with a first year regional guy. That is way cheaper than hiring pilots direct to mainline OTS.
A pilot hired by AA OTS is probably 40 years old on average. A pilot flowing 8 years after getting hired as an Envoy cadet could be as young as 30.
For every extra year that AA can keep that 30 year old at Envoy, that's a year of top scale AA pay they don't have to pay that guy. A 30-year-old new hire will be a lot more expensive to AA than a 40-year-old new hire when all is said and done.