Originally Posted by mketch11

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.

Originally Posted by Cicada

True. It's called furloughing from the top. The more they push flying to regional pilots, the more they can retire and not replace.

Originally Posted by wiz5422

Yep..enjoy those shiny 175s and all the.new routes. You are paying for them with your mainline jobs.

Originally Posted by Excargodog

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.

Originally Posted by Ihavenoidea

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?

Originally Posted by highfarfast

Well, if that's the case, we shouldn't have to negotiate anything away for them to increase the flow.

Let's see how that works out.

Originally Posted by buddies8

I would refuse the e175 if I were you guys. Refuse to go to training for it. Everyone bid the e145 the next bid.