Sliceback

It's a subject that's come up several times, online, in person, or over the phone. Guys read posters complaining about AA and wonder if it's a lousy place to work. The complainers number 10? 20? 30 posters? Out of 14,000 pilots. What's funny is when the complainers are guys who even don't work at AA. Or the guy that has only found one decent AA pilot. He's interacted with how many AA pilots and only one was a decent guy?? Of course it has nothing to do with how he interacts with people...

The flipside is the comments from new hires talking about how decent their training or first couple of years have been. It's not perfect, everyone you interact with isn't great, but if you're thinking about NOT coming to AA because of what guys post you're making a mistake. Keep in mind almost no one leaves once they arrive even when they have other offers.

viper548

Our contract and pay is behind Delta, United, FedEx, UPS, and possibly Southwest.

Advancement at AA due to retirements will be faster than all of the above.

If you have multiple offers, you've got some tough decisions to make. I don't regret coming here one bit and I haven't updated my apps at the other carriers since I started.

viper548

Half of the pilot group retires in the next 10 years.
90% retire in the next 20 years.

SilverandSore

AA = bottom tiered mainline pay and regional work rules. If you live in an AA base, it's a no brainer. If it's your only offer, no brainer. If you have multiple choices and would rather fight for what everyone else already has and work upstream against a union that only works for its top 10%, by all means come here. Otherwise, we're 5th, by a wide margin, in pay and work rules. We're playing catch-up and it's directly attributed to the APA mindset and their lack of negotiating abilities. The same union board was re-elected and they've been bickering over leather jackets and our newly implemented jumpseat system. Strongly worded emails are going to bring Doug to his knees, you'll see! Other than all of that, it's a damn good job and first world problems are tough for our fragile egos to grapple with. It's going to take a few years to really get cranking but once the retirements kick in, some of the negativity will be offset.

Arado 234

The glass is half full or half empty?

I agree that pilots in general whine and b!tch, but AA has some serious issues: Union leadership, what a joke! $3600 dinner, numerous efforts to f up the jumpseat, A321 pay (didn't that one backfire, did it?), the whole profit sharing drama (do you want more $ or no?), last leg trip swap (flying someone's leg for free? Are you ___?), and lots of other little things we used to have were given away! Why? Because they didn't make sense to APA. See, those boys running APA have been living in their own bubble of awesomeness that they kinda missed keeping up with times.

If the original poster thinks that *****ing is isolated and comes repeatedly from the same guys, then he/she should look at other corners of the Web. C&R, various Facebook groups etc do NOT currently present an airline what it potentially could be. A lot of it is self-inflicted.

Sliceback

Arado - 321 pay? Has anyone shown the LAA pilots how'd they'd have done with the SLI if the 321 payed like the 757?

Which of the major airlines pays the same for the 757 and 321? United. Why? Because they pay the 757 as a Group II a/c. Ouch.

C&R? It's a huge minority. The union posted some data at one point. Something like 15(?) looked at it once a month but the number of repeat posters was about 1%. The other 99% stay away because of its bitterness.

No ones pretending AA's perfect. Read viper's post. New guy. Gets hired, realized the drama is overplayed, decides AA is fine and pulls his apps at other airlines.

The reality is the candidates read the posts by the 1% and wonder what they're getting into. It's true for DL and UA's threads also.

Pick your domicile and hope you get hired with that airline. If it happens to be AA don't sweat it, you'll do fine.

R57 relay

Seems like I remember a post forwarded from C&R(before we had access) saying just that. That AA pilots didn't want the 321 paying 757 pay because of SLI implications. Short sighted, IMHO.

I know I will get rocks thrown at me for this, but I don't expect the company to open up pay rates mid contract, unless they got something for it. If every airline raised it's payrates to the next highest we'd have a never ending cost spiral.

What I'd like to see changed are some the legacy AA policies and practices that don't help the company or pilots. Take one tiny issue-hotel assignments and having them on pairings. I sent an email to the APA hotel rep about that. For my entire time at US we had that two months before the month started. You could bid around cities like LA, if it had several hotels and you didn't like a location. He said AA couldn't because they don't allocate the rooms until late the month before. No, they could do it, we've seen it done. It would just take a change in mindset.

I don't like a lot of the changes since single FOS. My morale is the lowest it's been in a while. But I think most things are fixable and wouldn't discourage pilots from coming to AA over the things that irritate me. On a day to day basis it's a good company, with good people making a good living.

Route66

The APA is short-sighted. But that is NOT the reason anyone should come here to work. Retirements, expanding airline and job security are the highest of all the carriers. Great route structure, and the pay isn't that bad, its the poor negotiations of the APA. The FOS thing will improve, the Company just wanted to get going with integration to stay competitive with rest. Just come here, do what the Company tells you to and you'll have a good career with the best job stability of the Majors.

AnotherEagleGuy

Small correction. Most regionals actually have BETTER work rules.

So, bottom tiered mainline pay AND bottom tiered mainline QOL work rules.

TOGAANG

So I am one guy who left United last year for AA. Why? Retirements greater than any other mainline and domiciles. Yes many things were better at United but they also came out of bankruptcy longer ago so they have had more time to fix things. AA isn't bad. I have met very few bitter pilots, most are all great people and enjoyable to work with.
True we lag behind in pay and work rules but it is not horrible, yes it can improve though. If you are 50 or older and had the pick of whichever airline I would say go UA or DL because their contract is better now and ours won't get renegotiated until 2019. However, if you are younger than 50 I'd say go with Domicile first, then AA if they are all equal after that. Reason I say that is because the movement you will see at AA. Delta has hired twice as many pilots as AA and I'd say United has hired 1.5 as many. No matter what you do you can never get those numbers back. That said we also have more pilots that will retire % wise and total numbers compared to DL or UA over the next 10 years so upgrades and job security will be better. Also majority of the pilots hired at AA over the last 2-3 years are older on avg by far compared to DL or UA. So those hired in front of you at AA will retire sooner vs later in your career.

Contracts and CEO's come and go just like Presidents. If you have 20+ years until you are 65 then pick by Domicile and QOL first and then contract. All the big 3 are great if you live in Domicile IMO.
None of us will ever know if we made the right decision until we retire. My dad retired this month from Delta as a 777 CA who had a 31 year career with them with the last 10 as a 777 CA. Multiple times in his career if you asked him if Delta was the best airline when he got hired or at that time he would have said no. Ask him now and he says yes for sure. In his words,"every airline will spend time at the top and at the bottom over a 20+ year career...." He has seen it and so have I growing up in an airline family. So I'm happy with my choice of AA and I guess in 2043 I'll reassess and see if it was the right choice.