Forgot to mention a major plus as an airline pilot: schedule flexibility. It's hard to find a high paying career that allows you to work the way we do.

Once you get to a Major, you can pretty much design your own work schedule based on what works for you. If you want to be the guy who lives in base and picks up any OT, then you can work your butt off and make some good money. If you rather stay at home more or pursue other ventures, you can pretty much bid reserve or drop as many trips as you can.

While you won't always get what you want, it works pretty good if you stick it out. For those who choose to work fewer flights, you can use the free time to focus on business or real estate investments, thus increasing your income even more.

We've all flown with guys who treat the airline pilot thing as the "part time" job.

Anyway….

”As a result, whenever there was a recovery, American could never participate in it. It structurally surrendered an advantaged position to its competitors. Because it was just so hell-bent on cost take-out.”

“The airline that figures out a way to not furlough people, particularly pilots, ....they are going to come out of this on top.”

All of this from our chief revenue officer Vasa Raja last year. So they predicted how to “win the recovery” (their words), yet did the exact opposite of what they said we needed to do. Flash forward to present day, where we are cancelling 50-80 of our flights daily through at least the middle of July. That’s roughly 1% of our operation.

Will this bring about any changes in the way this dumpster fire is run? We took government cash, paid pilots to sit home and didn’t train anyone until it was too late. Imagine doing your job as poorly as management does theirs. We’d be auguring planes in, and the training department would get flushed instantly.

The only department with real accountability in an airline has always been the pilots second place is maintenance. Inconsistencies are normal in all the others.

excellent post.

Nope. Completely incorrect. The bubble you live in is pretty air tight it would seem....

If history is any guide, they'll be asking for a government bailout any day now.

And to be clear, I’m not saying this is a bad job. Being an airline pilot is the easiest job I’ve ever had and the money is decent for what we do (for many of us anyway). I think I’m just cautioning someone from making what could be a poor financial decision during the peak earning years of their working life. If you enjoy flying go learn to fly. Go do the $100 hamburger thing and take the wife to the lake on an occasional weekend or whatever. You’ll love it and it will take years and years for the excitement to fade.

For me, I absolutely love flying. I just don’t particularly care for the lifestyle anymore. And truthfully it wasn’t always this way, just really started to change as my priorities changed with little ones running around the house. The first 3-4 years of a kids life are something to be cherished despite the hardship they can bring. I think for me this has been a tough reconciliation as I grew up with a dad gone on deployments etc. It makes an impact on a kid and I want to be there for all the moments. This may be a great career for someone. It may be for me. I’m just less sure of that statement now that I’m too far in to turn back haha.

So…..WHY is it you think he’s wrong?

The rampers have no accountability. How often do you wait for them to show up? Wands?
The flight attendants and csas are pretty inconsistent with the customer service. No accountability. I'm sure they're supposed to be at least nice to the passengers.

Management, do I need to go on?

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Why is this being billed as a negative. They parked 3 fleet types. Have the 737 sims just been sitting idle? They announced code shares with Alaska and Jet Blue and everyone was worried they were outsourcing AA jobs. Now AA has more demand than they can accommodate.

Are JetBlue and Alaska booking more emplanements causing supply shortages? Did AA revenue mgmt intentionally build a more robust schedule for June get scared and drop prices? Has AA market share against Delta and United gone up 3% before 1% cancelations?

Seems very reasonable they held off on training the junior pilots because it was unclear if they would be needed past Cares3 expiring.

Did Max coming back add to sim demand?

Seems like a misplaced frustration to say AA just sat on its rear end and is now kicking the cash out the door because it’s too difficult to pick it up.

Why is it being billed as negative? Because they said they saw the way to turn this black swan event into a win. They laid out how they planned to capitalize on opportunities on the back side of the pandemic. They then turned around and did the exact opposite of the plan they very publicly laid out. How can you bill that as anything but negative?

Excess bookings due to cheaper airfare than the market demands is a failure, considering there is an entire section of our company devoted to analyzing ticket prices. (but even for that point, you'd have to disregard that airfare was rising for the summer starting months ago). Why are we the only ones in the news for mass cancellations - could it be because we were the only ones who were not prepared? Could being the only major who furloughed play a part?

Just to be clear, you're saying that AA was right in holding off on training pilots so they wouldn't waste money... just in case they had to be the only major airline to furlough ~again~ during the recovery portion of the pandemic? Even in light of the fact that we are cancelling dozens of flights daily in excess of a month due to lack of pilots - even though we have hundreds of pilots who have been sitting home for 8 months on the government's dime?

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but it seems like you're defending their actions even though they went the opposite direction of industry peers. We are now suffering due to those decisions, while our peers are now. I guess I'm just interested in how you can possibly see any positives here

AA and Doug Parker continue kicking cash out the door. The biggest kick of cash was when genius Parker was snapping up billions of stock at 45 bucks a share and publicly stating the airline would never be unprofitable again. Until he gets launched, it's just going to be a continued slide to ever new lows of revenue and performance metrics.

Sounds like it's time for some executive bonuses to get paid out.

Sometimes a golden parachute is worth it…

I don’t think its a positive, but I think the only real way to criticize is sim utilization if the choke point is pilots. Speculating demand and missing by 1-3% is not a failure in my opinion.

If you buy stock and it goes up, it’s a negative because you should have bought more?

They built June block hours in April, underestimated, and have upguaged and added segments until they discovered a supply chain bottle neck.

If they are building August block hours right now they are speculating demand. Will demand curve accelerate or shallow out. Do you have facts that show under estimating is more costly than overestimating.

Did they call and say they thought they were being aggressive building June block hours because everyone was saying in April the CDC jumped the gun and was irresponsible for saying you could ditch the mask indoors.

They had 45B is gross revenue in 2019, 17B in 2020. Its reasonably difficult to guess where 2021 revenue will be.

Sounds like a unicorn experience.

A lot of guys are on their 2nd or 3rd regional, making 80k in the left seat to have insane levels of responsibly, commuting to reserve, junior manned, apps out everywhere and no calls.

I want to puke every time I hear some bright eye'd RJ FO that says 'WHEN I'm at a major" as if it's a given.

Nothing is a given in this industry. Some people are lucky, a lot aren't.

This is great. One has to wonder just how much influence Vasu had in these decisions. As we all know you can make recommendations until you’re blue in the face. If no one listens it’s a lost cause. I wouldn’t be surprised is Vasu moves on from AA sometime soon.

Are you kidding me? Is sleeping in your own bed every night the benchmark to a good life? I went from a full-time military job working 20 - 10 hour (to include one weekend a month). I woke up at 0530 every day and got home at 1730 every night. I was able to spend about 2 - 1/2 hours with my kids every night before they went to bed and another hour or two with the wife before we were both out cold in bed, only to do it all over again the next day. I live in-base and bid SC aside from feeling better mentally and physically, I've got more time at home than I know what to do with. I get to see my family more now than I did before even having to sleep in a hotel a handful of nights per month.

Said it before, will say it again. Furloughs should have never happened. Point is being proven right now. I’ve never scheduled on the scale of AA, however if We learn of one cent lining an execs pocket you can believe there will be much bigger issues than the current scheduling issue

“The airline that figures out a way to not furlough people, particularly pilots, ....they are going to come out of this on top.”

A direct quote from one of the people leading the company. They furloughed anyway because, right wrong or indifferent, APA wouldn't take their bait. In other words, they knew that furloughing pilots was going to bad for the company in the long run. They did it anyway. You can justify pilots being kicked to the street all you want, it was a bad idea and they knew it. The chickens have come home to roost.

I got it, he said the early bird gets the worm.

The first 15 months of pandemic were liquidity and daily cash burn. Month 16 1-3% cuts to schedules and AA should have immediately disregarded cash burn for 15 months to be in position for month 16 and captured 3% for 30-60 days until they can catch up.

Still no data to support 3% cancellations equals 3% lost revenue.

Plus the 16% 401K and profit sharing.

But how did you know? What information did you have that said Q3 and Q4 2021 will be better than Q3 Q4 2019. How are you navigating everyone else’s uncharted waters?

It doesn’t matter what he thinks, or you think, or what I think. The company thought that furloughs would hurt them. They were right. That’s it, no one said anything about a 1 to 1 ratio of revenue to flights cancelled or whatever. It’s bad business, even according to their own logic

If you stepped outside the bubble, you would not need this explained to you.

A little exercise for those running numbers.

The company cancels 1% of flying in July vs. offering premium.

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What an embarrassment of an operation. Eventually DUI Doug and the boys will get the ball rolling for BK, but until then the show down in Fort Worth has been everything I expected and more. This so called Airline is an action packed thriller.

I didn’t nor do I claim to have any info or insight then or now. However, did United with the largest exposure to international and wide body fleet furlough? Delta with their JV’s going bankrupt and losing big on them furlough?

Did they threaten furloughs, absolutely. Did they have management saying that furloughs was the absolute wrong decision and they wouldn’t do it so they could take market share and be prepared for a recovery? Not to my knowledge. If they did, well they didn’t furlough and get caught with their pants down much like AA.

If AA sends a message they better live by it. Right now WE’RE dying by it and expected to do more because of their ineptness. Asking work groups to volunteer to work for free because they screwed up, give me a break. They don’t care about us and have proven they can’t handle running a company. We made less money than competitors during the good times! It’s just embarrassing now.

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I guess i'd be careful assuming the medical career is ultra stable even in a black swan type event. It is in some ways. But. In my wife's physician practice in a large metropolitan area, due to Covid and the subsequent huge patient volume drop (pediatric emergency hospital), they canned a whole lot of the PA's and NP's almost overnight. Not furloughed to come back later. Just gone. See ya. It was unfortunate. Thankfully she was relatively safe from getting axed due to her being very specialized, although her paychecks took a pretty huge hit until relatively recently.

And here I am almost at the bottom of a legacy seniority list and the paychecks still kept clearing every month. Go figure. Oh and on the schedule side, her and her co-workers all still have to share the load of working the occasional overnight shifts and weekends/holidays, getting off shift 4 hours late and being exhausted with the kids while im out on a 4-day, etc etc. No seniority system in place to ensure you might have increased QOL control as you get older. No easy path to no nights/weekends/holidays. I'm also only speaking for her particular practice, I suppose it could be different elsewhere. I guess just pluses and minuses to whatever career one chooses. She still loves it.

This is one of the few remaining industries where you're completely off on your off hours. My friends who are moving up the corporate ladder are answering emails at 11PM and as salaried employees get nothing for working extra hours.

Also, in many states you work at the pleasure of the company. They can decide to let you go for any reason with just two weeks severance and no recourse.

I am curious, is there anybody out here that does not have redder trips for July? I can't trade anything.

CA 320 LGA.

Does it matter at all that American is flying much more than it’s competitors? Check any time of day and AA is on top with volume. Right now AA has 440 flights airborne, 26% more than Delta and 38% more than United.

Get with the program… they hate us. We hate us.

I am struggling to trade stuff down here in CLT/320/FO....I have some 3 days and it only is giving me 4 and 5 day trips to trade with...They have TTOT wound up pretty tight....gonna be alot of sick calls if they keep this up....

Oooooh, the old “if you don’t know, I’m not gonna explain it to you” reply. Well played, sir. WELL played.

It was an honest question. You wanna shoot arrows? At least provide some explanation.

If someone at DL or UA complains about something can they expect to hear someone chime in with "well it beats sleeping in foxholes and eating MREs" or do the ex-mil guys know better than that over there?

8-10 years and this mentality will be GONE.

N4TL blank. As it was for every trip in June as well. Place is a joke.

N4TL? What’s that for those of us not proficient in DECS?