Originally Posted by
Urban achiever
The only reason they flowed that many is because anyone who has the flow preference set to yes and stays more than five years on property goes to top of pay scale. No point paying 50% more for pilots when you don’t need to. Just ship them off to AA faster and the overall payroll cost will plummet.
So it would be the best interest for management to get everyone’s flow to five years, and I’m sure they’re gonna do everything they can to try to keep it around that to cut down on labor costs.
This looses sight of the big picture. PSA, as well as Envoy and Peidmont, are wholly-owned by AA. The cost of a given AA pilot is considerably more than that of of regional when considering pay, work rules, 401k, benefits, vacation, etc. Opting to flow pilots early wouldn't actually reduce costs since it prolongs the time that individual will spend on the highest cost portion of their career.
I don't know whether they are flowing the contractual minimum or if they are taking extra but I would say for certain the calculations being done revolve around staffing levels at both AA as well as PSA, the number of applicants at each, and the long term target staffing levels.