Is Horton not pushing a contract that makes AA pilots more productive? If your employees are more productive, then you can either A, get by with less employees, or B, increase production. Do you see AA growing? Probably not. Therefore, AA's staffing requirements will be less. That, in addition to furloughs coming back will further lessen the number of off the street newhires in the next five years.

I hope I'm wrong though!

 

God I hope they use AA pay scales plus some. US air pilots would get a windfall pay raise.

 

put this in believe it when you see it file

 

Pilotanalyst - pilot numbers over 5 yrs. F/A numbers over 2 (?) yrs. What are the F/A numbers for yrs 3-5?

Net loss of 700 F/A's? How many of those 2200 F/A's were barely flying? Minimum flying, if at all, to maintain benefits?

Those issues make it almost impossible to compare the the pilot vs. F/A announcements.

 

You are correct it is 1-2 years compared to 5 years, and we don't know the productivity of the FA's. The productivity of the FA's is a big question mark, and we will no doubt see productivity gains from them.

It is possible there were productivity enhancements of up to 10-20%, if that is the case then they could handle significant fleet growth while still shrinking there flight attendant employee group, but not for very long even with those rates.

Regardless their reasoning, the trend regarding the net loss of flight attendants does not seem to me to point to significant short term growth, making Horton's 2500 more difficult (not impossible ) to obtain.

In order to make 2500 work they need over 70 additional aircraft above current projections on the property in the next 5 years. That could be done by holding onto the MD80's much longer.

The following is the spreadsheets that build the projection model for AA if anybody has further insight on them please feel free to let the site know.
American Airlines -Supporting Spreadsheets | Audries Aircraft Analysis

The other alternative to make this work is a significant loss in current Pilot productivity with the new contract and new rest rules.

Both options to make the math work do not seem very plausible, but then again maybe they do want to hold onto the MD83's for longer.

 

PA- If I'm reading your chart correctly it shows a gain of 86 a/c by the end of 2017.

777-300 orders are 2012 - 2, 2013 - 8, 2014 - 3, 2014-2016 - 6 (no date yet).

787-9 - 42 starting late 2014 or early 2015. No firm order but annual report details the agreement.

 

PilotAnalyst - Thanks for taking the time to look at this with analytical approach. That doesn't happen often enough.

I am not sure what to make of the FAs numbers and if they indicate growth or not. Did you take into account the recalled FAs? Also, I wonder if a higher increase in productivity is not out of the question with replacing 767s for smaller A321s and MD80s for smaller A319s.

One thing that I found interesting from that link was the number of a/c coming next year. I looked at the pilots per a/c for the ones leaving and the ones coming and I came up with a net need of 459 (I use the 737 utilization of 11.45 pilots per a/c for the Airbuses). According to my math this would be enough to offset a 5-6% productivity increase due to new work rules. I am guessing the new work rules might have a little more impact than that (7-8%?) but there will still be the new FT/DT rules, some retirements, and the inefficiency issues with all the training that should start once the Airbuses start showing up.

-Bob

 

My money is on Parker now. I say it's on simply by watching Parker, he wears his emotions on his sleeves. I watched him run around on his cell right before it was made public that Horton got caught going behind the ucc, shortly after the cell phone "frenzy" a story leaked that Parker would present his plan to the ucc (something Horton wasn't going to let happen) an finally he seemed very happy when he reiterated that he was very, very happy that the ucc is asking for more time, this was last tuesday at a quarterly meeting ofdepartment heads. So my gut tells me he has gotten some good news recently.

 

Thanks for the intel everyone it is uploaded to website. It does bring the five year total closer to Horton's estimate. If we apply an 8% increase in pilot demand due to rest rules which is not included in the charts (although these may be washed out by increases in AA pilot work rule efficiency and PBS) it would bring the five year total up to just beyond 2000 pilots off the street. This does assume a 20% recall rate of remaining furloughs. If we add in that 20% to the total hiring that brings it up to just about 23-2400 pilots needed in the next 5 years, and the model could easily be off by by a couple hundred pilots.

BV your analysis is better than mine with an actual fleet pilot to aircraft ratio instead of a system average, plus when you consider the training gap you've mentioned that needs to be filled, 2500 is becoming more probable by the day.

In the end looking at the FA hiring may have been a red herring, particularly when we add in the recalled FA's and given their estimated productivity enhancements.

 

NDA ends Wednesday... do we think the merger is going to happen or not?