Are most of the new AA FO's coming from flow through? From what I've been reading, the flood gates are open at DAL and UAL, but I really don't hear much from AA. Just curious.

 

Yes lots of flows. And recalls. Mostly recalls now through the middle of the year I believe. Remember AA still had >1,000 on the street at the time of the merger.

DL and UA are expanding their flying too, we're down about 30 aircraft IIRC this year alone (S80's and 76's I think). That is also impacting hiring. That being said, at least on the US side, reserves are working their tails off.

 

Out of curiosity, why only flows and recalls through the middle of the year? I thought there were about 120 recalls who came back that were put into class starting in March (?). Shouldn't they be about through those by end of this month? Does that mean they will do a couple of months of only flows in order to make up for the guys/gals who didn't flow while classes were filled with recalls? I'm just trying to understand it better. A few posts ago someone mentioned that it would probably be August before any off the street hires go over to the AA side. Is there room for improvement on that? Also, if there will only be about 50 new hires on the Airways side this year, how many of those spots are left? And if the Airways side is so short, why would they have so few new hires on the Airways side?

 

Great question...,

 

Airways side is short but temporarily. In fact they are displacing AB CAPs out of their seats. There is a big training bubble with the 76 displacements.

Mainline AA doesn't seem to be growing like UA and DL. It's more the opposite unfortunately.

 

I can answer a few of your questions and perhaps some others can fill in the blanks that I leave out. First off AA was running about 2 or 3 months behind on aircraft training after new hires completed Indoc which is not an efficient way to train. They are playing catchup with that. Second the returning furloughs overwhelmingly either chose class dates ASAP or furthest out. So March was full of returning furloughs and the rest have been assigned June classes. I believe April has 2 new hire classes. I cannot confirm plans for May. Looks like June may be all returning furloughs. I have also heard no large amounts of new hires until Sept/Fall. The training dept is just catching up. This topic was brought up in the latest investor conference call as well. Envoy flow throughs are 20 a month when AA is hiring off the street.

 

Interesting point seems to be even with the training backlogs. CLT and PHX centers have been slowed down considerably. Why is a good question that no one has a solid answer for. Interested to see if anything changes with SOC.....

 

This is a big question.... No new hires are making it to the bus lately. Seems mighty strange. Things are stretched thin.

I hear they are retiring some older 319s. That might be the reason.

 

Think about it this way. If you're management and planning on significantly reducing flying on the LUS side after the summer is over (parking 320s and 757s), would you rather just be tight over the summer or hire a bunch and then have way too many pilots come fall?

Who knows. All signs point to LUS flying shrinking. Maybe the 190 fleet is going away and it just hasn't been announced yet?

 

Hmmmm.....

Interesting idea about the 190s.

I think they will go hard one way or the other... Either get a whole bunch or completely get rid of them.... We will see.