Those old school US Airways busses, as crappy as they look - the seats are soooo much nicer than the new slimline crap. As much as I ***** about AA, everyone is on the slimline bandwagon and it's terrible everywhere. I love flying on old ass Airways or JetBlue birds - seats from back when the industry only 'sorta' hated its customers. :)

Yea, mainline DH in CLT were almost always a bus, so it was weird being on the 73 again. Def a difference.

The rest of the questionable dudes put a popsicle stick up their arse and mailed it in to the chiefs to pick out the coolest looking ones.
Those are the Legacy guys.

In most bases with both doesn’t seniority move quicker meaning QoL? 5 years ago I was flying seminoles then dashes. I just want a line with more than 11 days off (thanks Piedmont)

Year 6 at Piedmont you graduate to 13 days off.
ask me how I know.


Talking about leg room, the dash had fabulous leg room.

2021 New Hire Class Dates/Sizes Planned:


08SEP —— 40
22SEP —— 40
06OCT —— 45
20OCT —— 45
03NOV —— 45
17NOV —— 45
01DEC —— 45
15DEC —— 45


Total: 350

MD80 coach seats were extremely comfortable

That the official word, or just rumor? 8 Sep... they better give out class dates so people can plan and give 30 days notice

It’s the most official word I have, but I am a nobody, so let’s wait and see how it shakes out. I would say it will hold pretty good, but one never knows…

I think these classes will be those with pre-covid CJOs and flows, nobody “new”, per se.

I agree with that, but some still need to give 30 days. I think the rest of the year is previous CJOs and flows, or close to it. Hopefully it plays out with a lot of new bodies at AA

This is what it looks like from an E175 or CRJ200:

https://images.fineartamerica.com/im...k-simonsen.jpg

30 days notice?? Where?

Didn't actually mean 30, I give two weeks, my bad. But you could as a courtesy. However, AA does seem to be taking their time in assigning class dates as I've heard comments from numerous people about.

With hiring and today’s environment what is a realistic timeframe for a new hire to hold DFW?

I think DFW was taking around 9-12 months to hold prior to covid.



answered a week ago by piper pilot.

Understand that. Any insight abt now? im sure things have changed with early outs, airplane and pilot retirements, etc

thank you! 😀

No one is really going to give an accurate answer as we just now started running new hire classes since the beginning of the pandemic. There simply isn’t enough data yet to draw anything realistic from. The network also looks a lot different today than it did pre-COVID. When I was a new hire people were getting DFW straight away on the MD-80. Obviously not anymore. Remember unlike an LCC or ULCC a large part of our network is still down. And with Biden’s recent announcement of travel ban extensions, movement won’t be full throttle here for awhile.

At DFW is the bus still more senior than the 73?

they were, but weren’t they cloth seats? That always kind of weirded me out for some reason…the slimline seats are terrible like the absolute worst, they force you to hunch over and there is zero lumbar support and zero seat padding. I will give a suggestion bc of my frequent DH-ing lately, please please keep it a few degrees cooler than normal bc breathing through that mask for 2+ hours is awfully warm.

I have friends that were hired in Dec ish of 2019, and can’t quite hold it yet. That said, by the end of 2022 I bet it’s back down to 6 to 9 months. DFW NB Captain is pretty jr now too, not LGA jr but on par with LAX and jr to MIA. 320 CA is Jr to 737 CA currently. We will know more soon when our bid award comes out.

Someone hired in Dec 2019 is only four months from the bottom of the list.
Likewise, someone hired in October 2019 was able to hold DFW on their first bid out of indoc.

Last month it was awarded about 450 from the bottom (or about 9 months of hiring).

Only on the 737

True
Question was about holding DFW, not DFW78.
For someone starting Indoc next week, little difference if they get LGA32 in their class bid, with only a six month seat lock, and the small trend of the past two vacancies, DFW will end up well under a year. Again.

there are only a few bases that have consistently taken a year or more to hold(with the occasional exception), CLT, BOS, and ORD. All the other bases should be easily held within a year for future new hires…that being said those bases could be held within the year for future new hires as past results are not predictors of future performance, haha.

We are in agreement.

What do current new hires look like when it comes to qualifications? College degree? 121 pic time? Volunteer at ALPA? Check airman?

Anyone being hired right now is either a flow through, or was offered a CJO back in MAR 2020. The qualifications they had aren’t going to be a great indicator of who might be selected now.

Got any parents that are AA pilots?

4 year degree 3.64 GPA non aviation
3000 TT all civilian
1500 121, 500 TPIC
No LCA, no ALPA volunteer
1 checkride failure CFI initial

No parents or special connections, worked for an AA WO and had a bunch of LORs and sent my cover letter to recruiters. Got the video interview invite January and CJO February 2020. I did have my app professionally reviewed twice and had an app on file since my first year as an FO at my regional and updated it every single day probably 360 days a year missing a couple days on vacation here and there. It seemed that mold was becoming more and more common I was shocked when I got the video invite. I almost trashed it! It said support nothing with American or congratulations or interview in the header! I never thought I would get the call with those qualifications, everyone I talked to hired outside the flow prior were similar 500-1000 TPIC but they all had a parent at AA. After I got my video I heard a decent number of no parent guys in the same boat getting the call. A majority of them were getting them from convention visits. I have no idea what hiring will look like now though…

5500 TT, 1400 TPIC, 4000 121, 4 year non aviation degree. Lots of volunteering: pro stands, alpa training committee, alpa communications committee, alpa newhire mentor, local GA aviation community volunteer work, etc.

deleted . . . .

As far filling classes. Is there a set % of new hires that have to be flows(incl. all WO) vs street hires(incl Mil). or is that just AA’s discretion?

Thank you

The short answer is: it is a percentage.

The longer (but still incomplete) answer.
Each WO has a slightly different agreement so it may be a percentage, or a flat number, or a min/max number. I believe they all refer to “per month”, not “per class”, so each class can vary as well. It’s all negotiated into the various CBAs.

mia ca 737 doh 9/25/2013
mia ca 320 doh 2/11/2013

Some more background.

2017 and 2018 had about 55% flows from the 3 WO. Sure going forward things will be a bit different, depending on contractual flow numbers and number of pilots AA hire.

Those two years had the remainder split between Mil. and Civilian OTS. One year was predominately Mil. The other was about split equally. Sure this will depend on how many Mil. will come available and how many other airlines are pulling in Mil. That is a limited pool. So when it runs low or there are more total hires, the Civilian OTS increases.

YMMV

Do you know if AA is still trying to keep a large pilot population around 15K? Or would they try to slim down a couple a thousand or get even bigger?

won’t be 15,000. Looks to be around 13,500 right now, and we are currently still losing more than we are hiring, but I imagine we will be around 13,500ish. We won’t need as many pilots, wince we don’t have near as many widebody aircraft, and JetBlue is flying a lot of AA customers in the NE down the coast.

Shrink, they parked 4 fleet types and have since entered partnerships with Alaska, JetBlue, Qatar, and JetSmart.

They have identified that capturing all revenue for the size fleet they have now is a priority over capacity growth.

Tore a page from Delta playbook who sells tickets for AirFrance, KLM, West Jet, Air Mexico, LATAM etc.

Thanks for the replies!

With the huge wave of retirements in the next 5 years it’s going to be tough to grow much if at all. All the new hires will just be replacing those leaving, plus the training center will be maxed out on upgrades, initials, and transition events. I’d bet most of the incoming 787s will be replacing the old 777s and 5 years from now we’ll still be at 13,500-14,000 pilots.