Originally Posted by
chrisreedrules
I mean really let’s think about it here...
Most pilots are within 18 months to flow by the time they’re competitive to be hired at another legacy or one of the majors or cargo carriers like FedEx and UPS. And even then you’re talking thousands spent on a resume re-write, application review, and interview prep. Plus the cost and time invested in job fairs etc.
And if your airline of choice is American then why wouldn’t you stay? Not to mention if you’re within 12 months a lot of guys look at the fact that they’ll get the 401K match first year if they flow compared to going somewhere else and not having that. Not to mention years of service for lifetime travel etc.
The real battle at the WOs is convincing junior Captains and senior FOs from leaving to LCCs like Frontier and Spirit and airlines like JetBlue and to some extent some of the ACMIs. Right now there really isn’t much incentive to stay so turnover is high in that segment of the pilot group and the WOs are spending a small fortune in training costs
At our WO regional, we are losing lots of LCAs in the 6 months prior to flow to the other legacy and cargo airlines. Those that put in the effort and work hard tend to get picked up pretty quickly when they reach about 5 years on property. LCA, good flight time, clean record, and putting in a little effort with applications. All of this costs a couple thousand dollars, but means hundreds of thousands and significant improvement in QOL due to higher seniority for the next 25+ years at their legacy carrier later on. This few thousand dollars is a very, very small price to pay.
Although there are a few pilots that are great and are content to wait out the flow, the majority of the flows would NEVER get hired by a legacy. At the same time, most of the best pilots that we could send to AA are hired by Delta or FedEx (or the last dozen LCAs to get picked up by United in the last few weeks).
As you know Chrisreedrules, we are losing more senior guys to legacy airlines than we are junior pilots to places like Spirit and Allegiant.