Originally Posted by
Excargodog
The problem is that the AAG business model REQUIRES regional feed and they DON’T (at least not yet) need flow. They can (at least at present) meet their mainline new hire needs by hiring ex military, hiring away competitors regional pilots, and hiring ULCC people who are still junior enough to be tempted. But increasing the rate of acquisition of their own regional pilots would just hurt their bottom line. They’d much rather hurt their competitors bottom lines by stealing their pilots than make it harder to keep their own regionals fully staffed.
And I really think if F9 and NK do something about their ludicrous first year pay, a lot of regionals are going to lose a lot of reasonably senior people.
This will be interesting to watch play out.
There is a cost benefit point at which increasing the flow is beneficial. Problem is it is REALLY hard to figure that point. Flow is about keeping pilots at the wholly owned as long as possible before they go to AA. In the current environment it is obvious flow is WAY too far away to keep those who have the qualifications and inclination to go elsewhere.
It is probably going to take a combination of better pay/retention bonuses and increasing flow to keep the WOs staffed.
The other issue of GUARANTEEING a flow time is that AA has to need the pilots at mainline and not as much so at the regional. And that has never been what flow is about. It’s always been about staffing the regional feed. I don’t want to say never, but the majors will never have a problem with staffing.