Originally Posted by Excargodog

The issue is a real one and why all the mainline HR departments except AA have ways to throttle and/or eliminate candidates from their “flow” programs, be they merely guaranteed interviews or additional testing or criteria demanding so much flight time as a 121 captain or an absence of bad indicators.

There is an old saying in economics, often called Gresham’s Law. It goes like this:



What that means is that even if someone like an AA wholly owned starts out with a fair random mix of the quality of newbies being hired over time the better candidates in that group are going to be taken up by a major before they ever get to the point that they would be flowing to AA. With every year of experience more and more of the ‘cream’ of each pilot group would leave and by the time someone was actually flowing to AA they would be coming from the leftovers, the least desirable of the group that started.

But it’s actually worse than that, because there is clearly no guarantee the AA wholly owned actually WOULD be getting a fair random mix.

We’ve seen it time and time again recommended in APC. If you are a pilot with “issues” - be they training failures, previous FAR violations, DUIs, no degree, arrested for beating your spouse or whatever - the recommendation is that you “go to an AA wholly owned, because even if the pay sucks and the work rules aren’t the best, it’s the only way you can be assured of getting to a major with...” whatever particular mishap or malfeasance might guarantee the other majors don’t take you.

The OP is 100% correct. The current AA flow - while it works admirably to keep the regionals filled - pretty much guarantees that many of the guys and gals that do eventually wind up being hired at the WO will be sort of the culls of the industry. And the quality of this group will further be reduced over time as the better candidates are picked up before their flow dates.

Over time, the “flowees” will be the leftovers of the industry - people who would not and could not have made it strictly on merit based hire. They may certainly be good enough, and it might even be argued they deserve the position for long and faithful service to AA, but they definitely won’t be the “pick of the litter.”