10L 4 Spacing

The head of pilot development for AA told a room full of pilots yesterday at OBAP that they are really not going to hire much OTS. They "believe" in their pipeline from their wholly-owned and the military...he said it's not impossible...but he gave off the impression they weren't going to focus at all on OTS unless you really Impressed them.

theUpsideDown

That's how you're gonna keep your feed costs down. Its better for the bottom line. When Delta allows EDV to up the pilot pay and classes trickle slightly at AA, they up the flow numbers and classes are full again. The flow is good for the bottom line, keeps seats full in indoc without paying much.

TalkTurkey

Lol, oh I agree with you. My clairvoyance has its faults. But I take no blame. I always state that info I put out is either an opinion or carried over from ramblings at ground zero. And yes I had previously predicted that DGI would be twice the number of SSP success rate. Epic fail.

fenix1

Could crossing streams be the only/best answer as things get tighter? Those at UA’s CPP airlines may well have a better opportunity than EDV’s pilot group to get on at DL and EDV’s folks may well get on at UA before CPP participants. Call me a glass half empty type (or a pragmatic business thinker like airline management...), but - when the onion is peeled back & details closely evaluated - these loosely-defined, non-contractual programs just seem designed for mainlines to grab pilots (to make the Nike’s cheaply at the regionals...) but then not let them get too close to the pot of gold that costs the head shed more bread. FDX (Purple Runway program) and UPS (AMF...and others?) are doing the same thing as DL & UA essentially and now Hawaiian (O’Hana) is doing the same thing. SWA’s new program is interesting because it’s not obviously self-serving (pilots build time at Jet Linx, XOJET & Swift), but - so far, anyway - it’s only open to ab initio folks (“cadet” or university), current SWA employees and winged military aviators. Frontier’s true flow from the 3 TSH regionals is so small in quantity & long in time in all likelihood that it’s almost meaningless and is interesting for the same reason as SWA’s (no obvious business benefit to Frontier).

Will AA’s true flow with their 3 WO’s eventually spread to other legacies/majors somehow? Or will the indentured servitude model eventually come to AA as the 3 WO’s contracts come due? (Seems unlikely to occur right now but why should AA continue to obligate themselves to mandatory/contractual flow if no one else in the Big 6 does?!)

theUpsideDown

The flow is absolutely a way to keep pilots at AA regionals a little longer and keep pay down. There's a guarantee number of flows but it didn't start very high. Youre right, theres a downside to the flow, but those numbers will increase because edv will pay more to fill classes and AA uses that flow as leverage to find and retain new hires.

The DGI is a way to keep pilots at edv a little longer and it has no guarantee. Pretty soon that AA flow will be down to five years, which will be about what the dgi is. Yes some of you will move faster with the DGI than a flow, but it's not always the people you think. The dgi can be cancelled tomorrow and they know a lot of you will stay. AA believes in the flow, so do the pilots. DL is still a little sketchy on this DGI thing, and I still find pilots at dl who think it is a flow and hate it.

Wearing the hat at edv doesn't get you any points at the interview. At all. None. You're lying to yourself and that self denial comes through in an interview. At delta if the captain doesnt bring a hat or takes it off, the crew does. No one walks around alone as "the hat guy" as if they were some wall of made up professionalism.

No economic surprises, none of this will matter. You 20 somethings will have 40 yr careers somewhere. I hope its better for you than it was for us, and if it is, it wasn't because you were special. It wasn't because we did something wrong. Some pilots are lucky, some arent.

Casualinterest

But the real question is... Did you see the last season of stranger things? Awesome!!

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theUpsideDown

Havent finished it yet just not grabbing me. I just need to skip to the end and see if the last episode viewing makes me want to trudge through the others.

Casualinterest

Noooo. Just trudge through it, the end is pretty worth it. But I don't think it would have the same effect if you skipped the middle. It heats up.

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theUpsideDown

Will try again, for you.

Casualinterest

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