Originally Posted by
Cujo665
The sooner they get a CA to leave, the sooner they can replace him/her with a less senior cheaper CA. Flowing pilots faster keeps more junior pilots in the both seats.
Nope. Cheapest pilot the major can hire is retired military. The person is near zero training risk and he/she is probably 45 years old. So you got someone who already has a pension, already has pretty good medical coverage, and will only be around for 20 years - spending only eight years at the top of the scale. What they really DON’T want is some twenty-something zero-to-hero guy/gal who is going to be at top of the scale for three decades. It’s basic queuing theory.
And whatever savings they might get at the WO by getting rid of the top guy/gal by flowing them to the major are DWARFED by the savings they make by leaving them right at the WO. Every year they delay flowing that guy costs them a year of longevity for a FO and a CA at the WO which costs them what? $2 an hour for each of them?
FO pay at the WO starts at $50 an hour and goes up to $56 at year four. That’s less than $2 per year per year increase.
Similarly, CA pay goes up about $2 a year as well, so the cost to the WO of your seniority for the two pilots is $4 per hour per year per year.
So what does it cost AA per year once you do flow? Depends on the aircraft but for a A320 pilot the annual increase is about $9 an hour per year per year for an FO and $2 an hour per year per year.
Heck, they MAKE money for every year they keep you on the WO because that’s one year less they are going to pay you top scale at the major.
BUT DON’T BELIEVE ME. Find your own financial advisor and put the question to them. Let THEM tell you, it’ll be money well spent.
The most economically advantageous thing AA can do is to slow flow to the maximum extent they can that will still attract WO new hires. It isn’t personal with them. It’s just business. And with billions in debt, high debt service costs, a lot of disgruntled stockholders because they’ve had to sell so much stock at a reduced price it will have drastically diluted the earnings per share even when they do become positive, and a reduced sized fleet leading to open gates and slots with loss of market share to the LC/ULCC carriers who will recover more quickly, AAG needs to save every dime they can.
