Goal: American...fly anywhere but Envoy?
 

If a pilot sought a career with American as their destination/career airline, is Envoy - as American's wholly-owned carrier - the worst possible regional they could work for?

My theory is that the progressively-deepening pilot shortage is driving the major/legacy airlines to create "systems" in which they can manage the pilots (i.e., balance between regional & mainline) as they see fit to do as much cheap flying as possible, so - in flow/agreement scenarios with a wholly-owned regional - pilots who are part of the wholly-owned regional won't get to the mainline carrier as fast as they would by applying from outside the "system." Thoughts??

I have no Part 121 experience so I would love nothing more than for the folks who have done some turns to correct me if this is a bad/incorrect way of thinking.

Being a part of a WO doesn’t mean you are exempt from being hired off the street. I am actively updating applications and networking to not have to rely on the flow. If it works and I get there sooner, great. If not I have the flow in my back pocket. With the flow for today’s new hire as long as it is again, you may be better off going somewhere like a LCC, or endeavor with their new contract, while actively pursuing the major carriers.

I would tend to agree thatfor people coming in now, there are much faster ways to American or any other mainline/lcc than Envoy. At this rate I almost consider Envoy a hinderence in some regards. Keep your apps out and updated and always be ready to jump.

I would like to see the stats on AA OTS hires. Percentage of wholly owned OTS hired vs other regionals. The pessimist in me wonders if there might be a lower number for the WOs.

Better believe it

I wonder if it's because they are lazy and not having their apps out.

As much as don’t like to say this and so many say otherwise, THE MAJORS HAVE NO SHORTAGE OF QUALIFIED APPLICANTS.

While I agree that “you can’t win if you don’t play”, getting hired OTS at a major requires you to stand out from all the other 15,000 or so regional pilots.

Of the 3-4,000 pilots hired by AA, UAL, DAL, SWA, UPS, FedEx, every year the majority are still going to be military and pilots who can add diversity to the airline.

That only leaves a small group and you have to really stand out to get the call. Bachelors degree or BETTER, Check Airman, etc.

There are valid arguments for both sides here. On one side, the current flow to aa from envoy is in the neighborhood of a decade. I'm not quite sure how it happened but amazingly their flow language gets progressively worse instead of better as more pilots flow. Their management is metering their flow to as few as possible even though they are growing and getting pilots. Back in 2015, a few got lucky and may actually have a 5-6 year flow. Psa who used to have the worse flow loses way more pilots to oustide attrition than envoy and should have 2014 hires flowing in later 2019. Piedmont has the smallest group and a few lifers and also has a fairly quick flow to aa, but I'm not sure what its looking like for newhires as of 2016 to today though.

On the other hand, in an aa newhire class of 40, 20 will be from envoy, 10 from psa, 5 from piedmont, which leaves 5 ots hires. Of those 5 you can bet 4 will be military which leaves 1/40 ots civilian hires. Not very good odds to get to aa as an ots civilian. The door to aa is pretty much shut to ots civilians.

This doesn't seem to be stopping people from going to envoy though as their latest class had 71 and there are no signs of slowing down. There is no incentive for managment to match endeavors pay so long as they are filling classes.

Might be true, but the bigger worry for civilian OTS hires is that flows and military pilots take up the vast majority of AA's new hires. They hire from regionals, they even hire from WO, but the total numbers are small.

The flow language for today's hires was shoved down our throat in 2014. Flow through will work out great for many- for others it is a tease, and a means to keep you flying regionals for cheap.