I've considered leaving as well. 2000#s below me but very concerned about our high debt load + management's lax attitude about it. Any intelligent individual knows that a) nothing lasts forever (profitable times) and b) history repeats itself in one form or another. To be quite honest, I get quite angry thinking about what seems to be the lack of any conservative financial strategy by our management team.

No all-nighters? Ha!

I flew a 3 day that left Miami at 2000 Eastern and landed at midnight with 23 hours off followed by a 0200 Eastern takeoff to land at 0530. Only to have crew scheds call me (during rest at 1045) to say "hey, congrats, you've got a 0830 report time tomorrow! What do you mean Daylight Savings Time? What's that?"

There are plenty of all nighters here. And the schedulers have no idea how that affects circadian rhythm. All they know is "but my program says you're legal!"

Ya... I didn't want to go to FedEx cuz I didn't want to fly all night. Last 2 years I can count on one hand the amount of day landings I've done. And in all my redeye flying I've noticed something.... 3 outta 5 radio calls going across country are AA. We seem to own the night.

I'm slated to retire very senior at AA. I wish I was at UAL right now. Who the hell knows how things will end up. Not worth leaving any of the big 3 right now unless you are very new and it's a base decision. In 20-30 years top dog will change many times. One of the three may not even be around.

Well to be fair AA is the biggest airline so that would make sense. What fleet are you on? If it's MIA 76 or similar then that's to be expected for a junior guy.

The 737 domestic has a ton of all nighters out of MIA. Probably 75% of what comes out of open time is some flavor of WOCL flying. Gotta love the MIA-SEA dash trip.

The A320/I also has quite a few all nighters down south.

As does LAX 320 eastbound

320... CLT. The base where you wouldn't know we're hiring because relatively I've remained stagnant if not slightly moving backward for 3+ years

CLT too...6 out 7 of my trips in April are red eyes.

To the thread topic, I've been here just over 3 years and feel "pot committed" at this point. I commute out of a SWA and UAL base, but I'm not jumping ship. Rather, I'm paying my house off as quickly as I can and saving what I can. If AA fails in ten years, Ill find a new career. I don't have the stomach to get in line behind thousands of younger and senior to me pilots.

I'm cautiously optimistic, when I make CA (assuming we retain our current fleet size) my movement as a CA will be much better than it's been as an FO. That's the light at the.end of the tunnel for me. If it doesn't work out, then so be it. I don't really worry about it until I read threads like this...