No idea. That said, a theoretical BK would be occuring in the context of a massive hiring spree and the need to be competitive in that environment. Black Swan events notwithstanding.....

 

If there’s bankruptcy, I don’t think it’ll matter whether they gut our contract or not. The applications will dry up very quickly, (at least the competitive ones). Particularly since it would be just AA filing bankruptcy, and not the rest of the industry.

 

There's intel on the hiring thread that they're having trouble filling classes to begin with. Sure, every Legacy airline may have 5,000 apps on file, but those 5,000 pilots very likely have apps out everywhere else as well.

It's gonna be fun, that's for sure.....

 

Hiring is only part of the problem. The classes that are starting now already have 6-7+ weeks wait before they go to training. A backlog only 2 months into the hiring resuming. By the time Christmas hits, it will likely be 10-12 week wait. While this may be great for some (sit home getting paid), it will certainly cause operational problems later.

Plus, for those getting hired now, they will spend a lot more time at the bottom of the list and stuck on reserve somewhere they don't want to be while those junior to them are stuck in the training pipeline.

Most people expect AA to skip months of new hire classes in 2022. This will help the shortages at the regionals (less will flow) and give the training department time to catch up.

 

That's pre pilot shortage thinking, they can't afford to stop classes even if the wait for sims is 9 months. They have to keep adding pilots to the list every month indefinitely, United has already said they don't care about training backlogs just get the pilots on property. It is going to get real interesting soon, my hope is the 76 seat RJs end up at mainline and that may be the only option. You can't park an A319, A220, or even an E190 at many of the Eagle designated gates in most hubs without a lot of $ to reconfigure the terminals.

 

Where have you seen that AA expects to skip months of new hire classes? I’ve read everything they have published and nothing like that has been even remotely stated.

 

He said "Most People Expect"

They've upped their class size to 50/week.
They want to run classes 48 weeks next year.

"Most People" don't expect they can handle training 2,400 new pilots in a year.

 

I have a couple friends in Indoc right now. They will not start their aircraft training until the last week of December. So far, AA has hired 5 classes with a total of 210 pilots in the last 2 months. What is going to happen to the training backlog when they start hiring 180 per month every single month? 6+ month backlog in training?

Meanwhile, more and more Check Airmen are resigning every week with no one applying for the job.

At some point, hiring will have to slow down.

 

Wow, 8 weeks off between indoc and aircraft training, what a deal for them. They just started the new-hires in September, with a relatively wide-open training center(in terms of capacity), and they are already that behind? Like you said, I cannot imagine how bad it will be in a few months if they want to push over 180 per month.

Our contract, for line pilots, leaves a lot to be desired, and it’s even worse for the check-airman; so bad that they want to return to being a line pilot, where they will still be subject to bad work rules, but will just make a crap ton more money. Management thinks there is nothing wrong as well; after all the front door still has a line of people wanting to work for this poorly run company.

Things are about to get even worse for the junior pilots too, when TTOT goes away. Losing that form of live trip trading will not be replaced by the new TTS. The way AA will program it, you will have to have to click or drag multiple options over multiple web page loads, each taking an eternity to load while you watch a slow-flashing red and blue chicken logo; each time reminding you how much better the always-red TTOT system actually was. As we sip our coffee we will be wearing out the trite expression of “Ahh….the good ole days when we had TTOT!”

 

I don’t expect them to hire 2,400 but I also don’t expect them to skip months of training new hires.