I think that the truth is somewhere in between for a new hire at any of the 3 WOs. 5.5 years seems overly optimistic. But 10 years seems unrealistic, especially not accounting for outside attrition.

2020 is the first year that the doors sort of blow wide open for the retirements at the legacies. American has said they want to hire 1300 and Delta has said they want to hire over 1,000 in 2020 alone. Hiring will pickup everywhere and so will attrition. At PSA we’re seeing attrition climb back to the levels we saw before the pay raises. And this is just the first year of big retirement numbers. It accelerates from here and doesn’t even begin to slowly taper off until the late 2020s.

Moral of the story, flow won’t be 10 years. It will likely be closer to 6-7. But in the coming hiring environment no one should really be depending on the flow if the goal is any legacy. And I’ll also add that not everything is peaches and cream at AAG right now. They are vastly underperforming both DA and UA at a time of record profits and have been thus far extremely slow to respond to market trends. They are carrying a ton of debt and when the next economic downturn happens they will likely feel a lot of pain. A lot can change with the flow and AAG in the coming years.