My view (since we all seem to be giving the APA a discussion today) is that I wouldn't like an APA-style system. Here's why:

First - it gives marketing too much ability to tweak stuff. "Oh, we're short two FOs over here, we have 6 extra Captains here". Sometimes at companies, if you give someone the ability to constantly micromanage something, they will. I think the AE system forces marketing and flight ops to plan ahead, which is nice since our lifestyle and pay depends on it. ;-)

Second, from my view of APA (from a far, I've never flown under it) from talking with my NWA buddies, it results in a near-constant status of training. Some guys over at NWA haven't gone to a recurrent class in years, because they keep moving back and forth between equipment. Personally, I don't want to head to MSP or ATL twice a year for weeks at a time.

Third, the company does have the ability to run many AEs per year. They don't need to wait for a certain month, from what I understand. The reason there are less is that there is more training in each one. The only reason there is DTW777 on this bid is that the schoolhouse could only handle the amount of training that was on the last one.