GucciBoy

For the record, picking up yellow slips pays you $0 unless you are full. All the credit goes toward reserve guarantee. If you pick up a green slip, it pays single pay above guarantee, but you get your off-days returned at the end of the trip. If you don’t have any more on-call days in that month, those “payback” days go into a bank you can use to drop trips in future bid periods if you’re holding a line, so that gives you the potential to make more than 2x pay for the reserve green slip if you drop days worth more than the value of the original green slip.

AllYourBaseAreB

Over half of 190 CAs have already been awarded G2 CA slots. They are just being withheld.

Almost 20% of 767 CA retire in 2020/21. The 767s are a small minority of the 75/76 bid status.

Relax, enjoy the movement.....

Rockiepilot

Movement is happening regardless. The junior nature of it I think will change is all. I don’t see this as a new normal. It’ll all settle eventually and the change of fleets will help. Maybe I’m wrong. We shall see. Approaching with caution isn’t an ill advised approach...

Dobbs18

Bottom of the CA list in LGA is and ALWAYS will go junior. It's not some anomaly that is unique to our airline. NY is junior base for every airline. To say that all of a sudden GP II CA in LGA will suddenly go senior is foolish, I think the bottom GP II CA's will hover in the 12,000s for the foreseeable future. A lot of guys know they can hold it but don't want any part of it. And for the guys waiting around until they get more senior, like lineholder status, does nothing to the bottom of the bid category list. While they wait the company still needs to fill slots which means the bottom will get replenished with other jr people. I am not sure we will see many more 13,000 numbers getting the upgrade but who knows, don't underestimate how bad LGA/737/CA is in many people's eyes.

TankerDriver

Can you explain this one a little more? If one picks up OG on an off day, we get those off days back on a scheduled reserve day?

Cicada

Sure hope so. But it's very troubling the company leadership seems content to be a perpetual bottom dweller in rankings.
Line pilots seem to think a simple change in leadership will eventually restore AA to a higher level of service and profitability.

It's not always that easily accomplished. My fear is Parkers' willingness to settle for high debt and last place service will place the airline in a position where it will easily be severely underprepared for the next downturn. Spirit and Frontier have large order books. They seem to target AA these days for cherry picking good routes. The high debt load could easily force aircraft sales and parking should a downturn come, and it will.

APA should keep the pressure on for management to incorporate good compensation and profit sharing to motivate employees to bring service levels out of the basement. Unfortunately, management seems to revert to perpetual feet dragging and disincentives to this move.

Pilot X

I think he’s talking about delta. We do not get days back after flying OG.

mainlineAF

The debt has been addressed multiple times. The fleet renewal spending will be much lower in the coming years and the debt will start trending down.

Cicada

Well, I'm addressing it again.
The stock buybacks are especially troubling. The debt level is going to perpetuate the existing gap between that purchase price Parker bought the slugs of stock and today's price. That's why the stock won't move up. That debt is a very troubling issue with Wall Street.

Lets hope there isn't a quick issue that comes out of the blue that impacts revenue and the ability to address the paydown of debt.
Many of us have seen this story before. Braniff comes to mind.
For that matter, so does USAir. Stephen Wolf went on a huge stock buying spree and wiped out free cash. He paid around 64 a share in buybacks that went to Zero. All in an effort to personally enrich himself. Parker takes his compensation in stock as well. It's troubling.

TankerDriver

Oh ok. I thought I missed something. I see it now. I was going to say, "WTF, over? Where be my days off?!".