That's true but they made up for it the year before by not having a class in October or December but having an enormous class in November, which we got 25 of

I think you are looking at the wrong end of the flow. You are looking at what having a flow saves AAG at the wholly owned level. They are looking at the big picture.

Let me digress just a little. Start with a question: Why do the major airlines fall all over themselves to hire some old retiring military O-6 who went through one year of UPT 22 years ago, then flew some non-transport category aircraft for a few thousand hours and has been flying a desk for ten of the last twelve years?

OK, I’ll concede the person is slow training risk and is gonna be motivated, but seriously, an old Warthog driver? How much bombing and strafing does AAG anticipate doing. No, the secret there is old and retiring.

A retired 0-6 is going to be pushing 50, meaning AAG is going to have that dude for 15 years. That’s going to give the guy three years, 20% of his career, at the top of the payscales. And the guys not going to push aggressively for pay, or medical care either, because he’s got retired Colonel pay and Tricare for life.

Now take the guy who gets on at the regional at age 26 and flows to AA 6 years later. That dude is going to be at the top of the payscale for 20 of his 32 years, roughly 60%. He’s going to have a young family too, using a fair amount of medical care.

Per flying year butt in seat time - the old codger is cheaper at the major end of the flight hour career. Relative to the savings of keeping that person at the low end of the payscale, Training a few extra people and giving them a type rating is pretty cheap.

And it’s sort of the same with flow. Every year that AAG can slow flow by hiring non AAG wholly owned pilots outside of the flow is that much less on average they will be paying pilots that do flow.


You gotta look at both ends of the flow to understand the motivation. Follow the $s.

Not going to disagree with this. But we know the company will expect something in return for increasing flow and you were saying that flow is more important to AAG than to us.

BTW, I also agree that the flow is more valuable to AAG than us but that's not what this pilot group acts like. Someone says fffllllloooooowwwww and everyone here get's hypnotized or something.

Really interested to see how dera spins this one

Spin what? Numbers are numbers.

Forgive my ignorance but I just don’t understand how the flow could be slowing in a time where AA is nearing 1,000 mandatory retirements per year and taking aircraft deliveries? I get that there will be displacements from the S80 which would slow the flow for a month or two but how else would they cover all of the retiring pilots and fleet expansion? Additionally, non-mil OTS hires make up less than 10% of the annual NH classes which makes things even more confusing. Does this mean I need to join the military to work at AA?

Contract sets the min number of pilots going over, not the max. If AAG wants more than 15 a month they'll get it, lowering the min just gives the company more control over how many they HAVE to send over.

Just because AA is retiring that many pilots doesn't mean they have to get those pilots from Envoy. They have 2 other WOs and will have additional street hiring if they really want to replace all the retiring pilots. Probably more non-mil pilots hired.

American is consolidating their fleet so 1000 retirements does not equal 1000 new hires. If it did American would be scrambling to increase their training already.

My opinion is the opposite. The contract/loa sets the max (15 for the next group), and American sets the min depending on how many or if they are even hiring that month.