Originally Posted by
coodrough568
oh ok. you really just sound bitter that compass didn’t make it and you’re just foaming to see someone else go down. it is bound to happen. Also AA isn’t the only one losing money, they all are. At least the graph is trending upwards towards the end of ‘21.
Not bitter about anything nor would it change the facts if I were. Certainly not rooting forward AA to go bankrupt and put pressure on everyone else to match a bankruptcy CBA. But facts are facts. The issue is the value of flow, not my emotions. The FACTS are that flow is a carrot and the stick it is dangling from got a WHOLE LOT LONGER when AA downsized their fleet, gave incentivized early retirement to some of their senior pilots and furloughed a bunch more. 700 pilots that once WOULD HAVE been retired over the next five years are already gone
More than 700 American pilots accepted the early retirement offer, according to the Allied Pilots Association. Those pilots will receive 50 hours of pay per month and full benefits beginning at age 62 until age 65. A typical month pays pilots 85 to 90 hours
and there are 1500+ more that have been furloughed. Generally you don’t furlough anybody you are going to bring back in a year because it isn’t cost effective.
And they severely cut back their fleet:
American has officially retired the Embraer E190 and Boeing 767 fleets, which were originally scheduled to retire by the end of 2020. The airline has also accelerated the retirement of its Boeing 757s and Airbus A330-300s. .
Newsroom - A fond farewell to five fantastic fleets - American Airlines Group, Inc.
Speaking generally you decrease the need for pilots by a factor of 12 for every plane you take out of the fleet. You want to talk Compass? Three or four years ago Delta took 7 E-170s away from Compass and Compass didn’t hire a new pilot for over 6 months. AA just pulled 80 off the line. Do the math. It has nothing to do with my feelings toward Compass.
AA major needs a thousand pilots less than it did. After early retirement they still needed 300 less than they kept. And they’ve got the better part of 1600 on furlough. That means a number of things to flow. There are a lot fewer (700 in fact) pilots retiring in the next five years than there once were. Nobody, doesn’t matter if they have command time on the Space Shuttle, is going to be hired before the furloughed pilots. Let’s say that with the reduced size of the fleet and the reduced retirements they are going to need another 600 pilots a year as the economy improves - and that’s a lot, the annual average for the last two decades is less than half that and don’t forget the people who retired prematurely who now won’t be opening up slots in the future:
Major New Hires 2000-2019. 20 yr total
That’s still over three years before there will be ANY AA new hires. So you can impugn my motives all you want, it doesn’t affect me an iota. What you can’t do is beat the math and the numbers.
Anyone working at a WO ought to have a REALISTIC idea about the value (or lack of it) of flow. If you don’t believe me, well and good, hire your own accountant or financial advisor and have THEM explain it to you. You are going to be investing years of your life making the jump to the next level. If you don’t understand the facts, pay someone for a few hours of their time to explain it to you.