Originally Posted by
ShyGuy
A SAN base would mean half the bases (3/6) would be exclusive to AS for a major pax airline. ANC, PDX, and SAN. It would help retain and recruit more people to AS.
The NY base was a dead end base, in that where you got in is where you were stuck with very little movement. For a FO, it was a career dead end. Even if NY opened up with 115 pilots again, why would someone come to AS for that when the big 3 have a very large presence in the NYC base? It would really only make a subset of the current pilot list happy. They’re senior enough that they aren’t leaving.
PHX is AA and SW. Losing PHX sims makes less a case for a base. But even if they do, it’s a much bigger AA and SW base. It’ll be very small in size (relatively speaking).
Of all the cities out there, SAN seems to make the strongest case for a pilot base that would help strategically for the airline network, pilot retention and recruitment.
I really think that some kind of weight should be placed on cost of living. Particularly the cost of purchasing a home. SAN doesn't really help the dynamic that all of our bases are incredibly expensive places to live. Not so much if you're already here but it's very expensive if you are moving to one of our bases from almost anywhere else.