Excargodog

The usual method. You grandfather the senior people and offer to INCREASE the flow for THEM and they sell out the junior people. You get 51% yes. It’s done all the time. Look at the pay for newbies at Sunny, Allegiant, Frontier, Spirit... Newbie pay is less than $60 an hour. At UPS it’s $46 an hour.

Senior pilots sell out the junior pilots all the time. It’s scarcely a new idea.

Bluetaildragger

Everyone knows that for the most part, you get to AA because you flowed or you're military. OTS happens but is difficult and the minority. Many at the WO regionals have their eyes set on AA due to bases/retirement projections, and that is 100% of the reason they are there. Because generally, it is the only way to get in for civilians.

rickair7777

It's going to be a problem. I finally got seriously motivated to leave the regionals in significant part because the quality of new FO's plummeted abruptly as staffing pressures first caused the elimination of most screening standards, and then caused the training dept to start dragging candidates through the system.

As a CA I didn't mind training/mentoring the occasional noob but it turned into perpetual IOE with weak (by historical standards) pilots. It turned into a rare treat to fly with an FO who knew his flows and could do a GA or TCAS RA and not get into an UAS without my intervention.

That was annoying. What really concerned me was the fact that the company was going to start dragging these people through upgrade next, and MY financial future depended on these pilots (upgrading without about 20% of the airline experience that I had when I upgraded) not bending metal and thereby getting feed contracts revoked.

Not looking forward to seeing more of the same flowing up to mainline.
Not sure what the regionals are going to do about quality candidates, since they've already about exhausted the accumulator of previously experienced folks waiting in the wings. The need to incentivize *talented* candidates to enter the pipeline.

izzy

I just flew with an ex Eagle DFW guy who interviewed and got hired a year before he would have flowed. Smart one he was, got that number before his buddies.

Excargodog

You SERIOUSLY believe that half of AA new hires are going to be military? Really?

Total USAF fixed wing pilot training is only about 1100 a year, including guard and reserve. And the active duty side is about 2000 pilots below their authorized strength. Everybody who isn’t guard or reserve gets a 10 year active duty service commitment start after UPT and considerable bonuses to stay on active duty until retirement.

Realistically, that’s 1000 pilots per year at best SPLIT AMONGST ALL THE MAJORS.

AA alone will be retiring nearly 800 pilots next year who will have to be replaced, assuming no growth, do you seriously think AA will get 400 military pilots - 40% of the whole number - with United, Delta, SWA, Alaska, UPS, FEDEX, and everybody else wanting the same people?
You’ll be fortunate to get 200 military pilots a year in the coming years. The rest will either be OTS hires - which again puts you in competition to everybody else - and the remains of the AA wholly owned regional pilots after everybody else has hired the ones they thought were the best.

That’s reality.

A330FoodCritic

During my initial Eagle class we had class on Thanksgiving Day, that was my motivation.

ORDinary

Who is "you"? Envoy management? AA management? Why would they want to increase the flow to do that? You don't just have to convince 51% of pilots, you have to convince all 3 parties to change the contract.

The only reason they have the flow is as a recruiting tool. If you dilute it for new hires you lose it for that. Then you have to pay even more. Why would both AA management and envoy management agree to that? They just assume that bad pilots will be weeded out by training, plus Envoy is very quick to fire pilots.

And those 51% of pilots who will supposedly agree to a short term increase in the flow would be trading for language that says what? There is already future flow agreement language (after the protected pilots agreement) that says that flow is conditional on disciplinary records. Every envoy pilot who has been there long enough knows that management uses this to push pilots in many ways, from punishing fatigue calls to violating the contract. Everything you do to stick up for yourself is subject to disciplinary action. Why would 51% of pilots voluntarily give even worse language to a management team they don't trust? It was a few years ago but management came to us once and offered 25 new aircraft in exchange for a B scale (technically a C scale, since regionals are already a B scale), and we told them to pound sand.

Envoy pilots hate their management and vice versa. I don't necessarily disagree with the OP's sentiments, but it is a fantasy that AA pilots could wave their wands and get envoy management to give up on a free recruitment tool, get AA management to threaten staffing at one of their regionals, and get pilots to screw their coworkers, all with agreed upon language with a management team they actively hate. As we used to say at Envoy when I was there, the best thing Envoy had going for it was a contractual plan to escape.

Bluetaildragger

All I'm saying is, the current make up is 50% military. My comment was related to the mindset of regional guys at this time as there are many talented and smart pilots at the AA WOs who recognize that right now that is just about their only way to get in the door.

Do you really believe that AA is going to try to go through the legal trouble of nullifying three legal documents with three companies chock full of pilots they need in seats in the future?

Varsity

I don't understand the pretentious idea that fully qualified 121 airline pilots flying an AA paint job airplane, owned by AA, in an AA uniform, with pax who believe they are on AA isn't 'good enough' to work at AA?

The differences are so diluted. We've got; the size of the pay check, number of seats in the back.. and the invisible line in your brain.

When AA passengers ride on an Eagle 175, 95% of them think it's AA and can't tell the difference. This infighting is only recognized by pilots and airline management, who love to stratify the pilot group.

USMCv22

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