Coming To Envoy Now Makes You The Problem
 

It has become clear, based off the communications we are receiving, that new pilots coming to Envoy are indeed the cause of the company not increasing benefits to us.

It needs to be said, any pilot coming to this company from this point forward, is the reason for the delay and needs to own that they are part of the problem. You may have your reasons for coming here, you may have made an agreement, but at the end of the day, a deal with the devil is just that. You can justify it all you want, but you are actively choosing to slow down, if not stop, the betterment of 2300+ pilots and their families.

If we keep filling classes with 30+ people, it will be a cold day in hell before anything gets done. The union likes to say that not signing the AIP will hurt recruitment, well it doesn't seem to be doing anything as of yet, because people keep coming to class.

The union pilots working in recruitment, you too are the problem. Every person you get to come here is directly hurting your fellow pilots, not to mention the pilot you are getting to sign on the dotted line. You are locking these pilots into a contract that they won't be able to get out of, locking them into a system that manipulates their employees and locking them into a pay/benefit structure that is below industry standard.

It's a pilot's market. If you feel so strongly, turn in your 2 weeks notice today. There are plenty of jobs available. If you don't do this, then you are the problem.

Yea because it’s just so easy to pack up and leave.

Can’t really blame the new guys unless you’re working to get out yourself. They’ll have to hire a lot more than 30 per class if attrition gets bad enough.

According to the union, non flow attrition is only 94 pilots year to date. That’s pretty low considering how bad morale is out there right now.


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Welp, by his logic, each pilot who has previously worked or is currently working at Envoy is a problem. Be the change you want to see in this world, everyone should quit today!

What a doofus.

I don't agree. Current Envoy pilots have a lot more to lose than somebody that is currently trying to decide what regional to work for. Relative seniority, vacation, pay, and other things are big forces in starting over at another company.

On the other hand, if you're just starting out, and don't have this to lose, picking a regional that doesn't make you one of the lowest paid regional pilots in the country with terrible work rules really makes sense.

Compass is moving out 20 guys a month, mostly Captains but a few senior FOs, from a pilot base less than a third the size of Envoys. People actually hustling and finding jobs to improve themselves and leave vacancies to be filled by the new guys coming in. Nobody is sitting around enjoying the life of a senior FO rather than upgrading. And nobody is shaming newbies who simply want a 121 job - just like you all did a few years ago.

They are getting their 1000 of SIC in 16 months from intro, upgrading a month or two later and moving on promptly after they get their 1000 121 PIC.

That’s the price you pay for flow. Slow progression.

I agree with your premise. However, many of the people in these classes made prior commitments (Cadets, RTP). It may be a while before we see actual class sizes drop.

Is there a way we can follow entrants into the Cadet and RTP programs?

Yep. I've said it a thousand times already I think. Flow makes this pilot group lazy and is a great recruiting tool for management. We should never be giving anything up for flow.

LOL! Blame new hires at a regional for your current working conditions under a current already established during your time. Airline industry newbie :rolleyes:

You're not wrong. The guys blaming the new hires are the guys that came here not that long ago with the same exact contract in place with the same complaining on this forum about this management team. The only thing that's changed are things at other airlines.

Yes and no. The people coming in a couple years ago actually improved conditions for those already here. All those new hires allowed the 8 years FOs a chance to upgrade and the flow to kick in.

Now, new hires are actually stalling improvement.

I will admit my original post was a bit dramatic, had a momentary act of unbridled frustration. I don’t honestly think new hires should be drawn and quartered. However I felt the need to draw a line in the sand else risk never knowing when we stepped over it.

My apologies if i offended.

Well, the company isn’t saying that raises are contingent on people from a year+ ago leaving. They’re saying that raises are contingent new hires drying up. Meanwhile, they’re firing people already on property every month for *****ing about the job publicly on social media. You know, like we do here. Don’t think they care if we leave. They’d probably be happy to replace us all with enthusiastic cadets whose parents would pay for them to be able to fly the 175.

Until you run a campaign, billboards, picket like Frontier, you can’t really hold anything against new hires

Tell that your union who seems to refuse any of that for various reason ...

Because they will come out it’s a lawsuit that we will lose. I’d be more upset if management did NOT express their desire to continue their talks, so we just have to be patient. From what I’ve heard is performing the way we are (we are still the highest performing WO, check airportal) we need to give them reasons why to give us the raises by action and performance. We have little leverage being WO so to compare ourselves to Spirit or Frontier and what they did is NOT applicable to us.


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What kind of nonsense is this? You have the same leverage every employee group has, YOU ARE MAKING MONEY FOR THEM. At least you are if they aren’t lying on their SEC filings.

I guess the promise of flow sort of contributes to a feeling of helplessness and dependency. Sort of a ‘they own me’ sort of attitude.

You know, plenty of people at regionals without flow get on at Legacies and majors, and it doesn’t take them ten years to do it either.

Do you have any apps out - with anybody? Are you even exploring other options?

That’s not illegal under the RLA you know. And the hiring picture is as favorable as it has been for a long long time.

Yes, I have my apps out, I’m not like 90% of the pilot group here waiting on the flow, it’s in my back pocket.

I think you’re at Compass so I’m not sure if things are different over there with these situations, but what kind of leverage does a WO have especially when we get our flight files pre picked for us by our parent companies? They have complete control, and that’s what big companies typically want. Not trying to sound like a defeatist if that’s how that coming off, but it’s honestly kinda laughable to be comparing ourselves to LCC’s/ Majors when Spirit got their asses handed to them and got smacked with a lawsuit. In fact, AA just WON their lawsuit against the mechanics, so they got smacked with a lawsuit.

Like I said, I’d be more upset if management straight up walked away but they have recognized that the pilot group should get a raise so at this point it’s an extremely annoying waiting game and let the 2 sides figure it out.

What are your thoughts?




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I would disagree, those of us that were here didn't see many improvements. We weren't the ones getting the big bucks thrown at us, or student loan repayment. The company was only benefiting the new hires. Just like today, if the new hires weren't coming in their only other option was to increase improvements for everyone on property.
So you are just as much the problem as a new hire today. Like someone already stated...why don't you lead by example and resign?

If you were a captain your flow decreased if you were a long term FO your upgrade happened. That is an improvement.

Coming to a new airline fresh is different than leaving one 3+ years in so your lead by example doesn’t even make sense.

That your situation is no different than anybody else’s except for how you react to it, ‘you’ in this case being the pilot group as a whole. Wholly owned or not, a regional dances to the tune of their codeshare partner who is paying them. And yes, the RLA isn’t working as it is supposed to, in part because the unions seem reluctant to go to federal court to try to compel the NMB to actually meet the timelines spelled out in the law. But I honestly think a good part of the problem - for those who have it - is the promise of flow.

None of the legacies and few of the majors really have any serious problem getting well qualified applicants. The only benefit of flow - to them - is that it is an effective device for insuring that their regionals get a large supply of cheap labor, because regionals DO have a problem getting well qualified applicants. So flow and cadet programs are mechanisms to assure a goodly supply of cheap labor at the regional.

And the major offering a flow program really doesn’t CARE if those in it are slow to progress. They are a butt in the seat, making money for the company at the regional and no matter how much they are making there - even as a Captain - it’s less than they would be paid as a second year FO at the major.

In fact, every year they can delay that person flowing to mainline is worth - to the company - the difference between a WO Captain with those years of seniority and a legacy Captain’s final year of pay, retirement, and bennies, which is a fairly princely sum. And while you PERSONALLY might have your apps out, a lot of your fellow pilots are falling right in to the trap. And the trap isn’t really just cheap pay, because - frankly speaking - it’s chickenfeed compared to what the company gains by delaying upgrade a few years. The most you are going to get in a new CBA is - what, $10 an hour. Times 1000 hours a year?

Stalling one pilot upgrading to AA mainline for one year will save AA the difference between a senior Envoy CA (currently $90 an hour but let’s bump it $10 and call it $100k annually) and a senior AA CA ($342+16%= roughly $400K). Because that’s how much less AA will eventually be paying them at that top rate. Stalling flow - delaying for one year the onset of mainline seniority and lowering the average seniority of the AA mainline pilot group is huge. It dwarfs the cost of initial training of newbies at mainline.

So every pilot that is ONE YEAR OLDER when he finally flows is a $300K WIN for AA management, just in that one last year, and more savings for every year it delays them getting to that top pay.

So if somebody at one of their regionals wants to be unaggressive about applying to majors, that’s great with them. Eventually they’ll MAKE you upgrade - they do have to have captains after all and the supply of DECs is finite - but nobody at AA is going TO ENCOURAGE anybody to get to mainline one instant sooner than they can drag it out.

You mention Compass. They have 700 pilots, give or take, and they attrit (or more accurately ‘graduate’) 20 pilots a month, with a current median ‘loiter time’ at that regional of something under four years before they move on to bigger and better things.

How long do people stay at Envoy?

No one’s flow changed based on new hires coming. The company has held the flow to minimum they could at all times. Increases to upgrade times sounds dubious to me, but I suppose maybe a bit. Not much though.
I don’t fault anyone for the career choices they make. If someone chooses to work here, more power to them. Saying new hires helps flow is ridiculous. I know it has been the party line for a long time, but it’s never actually been true.

Blaming new hires coming here now and not new hires that came on back in 2016, 2017 shows how short minded you are. If it makes sense now it made even more sense back then.

I disagree to an extent. There are better paying airlines that have flow now.

Your logic has a serious flaw.

Pilot flowing costs AA the same first year salary as an OTS hire.
Pilot NOT flowing costs AA higher regional rate, plus the same new hire rate for the OTS guy who they hired.
Pilot flowing can be replaced with a first year regional guy. That is way cheaper than hiring pilots direct to mainline OTS.

A pilot hired by AA OTS is probably 40 years old on average. A pilot flowing 8 years after getting hired as an Envoy cadet could be as young as 30.

For every extra year that AA can keep that 30 year old at Envoy, that's a year of top scale AA pay they don't have to pay that guy. A 30-year-old new hire will be a lot more expensive to AA than a 40-year-old new hire when all is said and done.

AA has hired multiple 30 year OTS guys. Clearly this is not an issue for them.
Stop making up stuff if you have no facts.

Nope. AA benefits to the extent they can START OLDER GUYS AT MAINLINE.

Seriously, did you think retired USAF O-6s were being hired at AA because they had UPT 23 years ago back in the twentieth century and then flew A-10s for ten years before finishing out their USAF career flying a desk? That their single seat bombing and strafing experience was all that valuable for flying pax? It isn’t.

Those guys get hired because they are 46 years old and reasonable training risks who are only going to work their way up to top pay for the last 7 years of their career. Also because they have no history of association with unions, already have a pension so they aren’t going to be pushing as hard for pay raises, and have Tricare benefits that decrease their insurance needs (and costs). They can do the job and they cost less. They are a butt in the seat.

Hiring a 26 year old means they are going to be paying that guy top rate for 28 years. Now granted, they are going to have to hire TWO of the old f@rts to get the same number of pilot years, which means the two old guys will still be on the top rate (combined) for 14 years, but they’ll also BOTH be working their way up that scale for 24 years and they’ll be saving money (compared to hiring one young guy and keeping him to his retirement) for 14 of those years.

If management could, they’d only have two scales, FO and Captain, because all they really care about is butts in the seat and anyone qualified by law to be there is - in management’s mind -interchangeable with anyone else that could legally hold that position. A 60 year old Captain with 5 years experience and a 55 year old newbie FO would be fine with them. They do not benefit - not to any great extent - by having someone flying at a major for 40 years most of that at top rate.

But the 12 year sliding payscale is engrained in both precedent and contract, so the only way they can manipulate it is to hire people who will spend the greatest part of their career on the lower rungs of the payscale ladder.

They learned their lesson with the mandatory retirement age change, when they found that allowing pilots to work to 65 forced them to retain their most expensive and least productive employees, the ones with the highest wages and most accrued benefits,

It would be different perhaps if there were any dearth of qualified applicants at the major level, but there isn’t - certainly not yet. Or if only young applicants were available, but with military retirements that’s not happening yet. But if they can get the average seniority level down they can really save money and keeping someone flying for them as a regional captain for an extra one or two years before they restart his seniority will save them some serious coin. Multiply that by several thousand people in the upcoming hiring wave and it’s even more.

If you don’t get it, go talk to an actuary and get them to explain it. The math is sound, and AAs financial people know it.

Not saying they don’t hire 30 year OTS guys, just saying that the purpose of the flow is to stock the regional, not to stock the mainline. Management knows that even if you don’t. Get an actuary to sit down and do the math with you if you can’t do it yourself.

I'm sure that they have. Here's the deal: the longer that you stay at Envoy, the less that you cost AA in the long run.

I don’t say this often or ever but I agree with you on this. That guy was smoking some strong peyote. He has some serious flaws in his rationale.

There is so much to unravel with this 2016 vs 2019 comparison. Here’s the crux if you came here getting the HUGE bonuses then you have no room to complain about pay.

Company forces concession on pilots.
Pilots say no
Company takes away planes and bases down grades CAs to FOs
Pilots take concession with a little bonus and new flow.
Pilots leave Envoy
Company offers FO bonus money to get pilots to stay.
Pilots still leave.
Company needs pilots so it hangs out a nice bonus for NH.
NH come running right into the same 💩 that’s always been.

The only thing that got better for pilots on property was stagnation started to give way which yes was a positive. But hey you have movement now and are wanting stagnation. Crazy.

You came here knowing the company doesn’t care about to once you are here. You saw what the pilots in property got when you got you massive bonuses. You made more on day one then most of those guys made their first year. You have no room to complain because you took the bait the company used to fill seats in the plane knowing the guy sitting to your left got screwed.

Final note: Come one come all you aren’t the reason the company hasn’t offered pay rates. When pilots start leaving Envoy at rates back then is the only time you will see pay rates increase. It has little to nothing to do with NH. I welcomed the 2014 pilots all the way through the 2019 pilots and I don’t fault anyone for someone here. I came here in 2013 when this place was the worst option next to MESA. I’m thankful those guys didn’t give me grief for coming here.

Agree, we shouldn't be fighting with each other. It isn't any pilots fauilt that we aren't getting pay rates. It is a management team that doesn't value pilots and only them to blame.
All we can do is show them.the value we have by our actions and unity.

Then you are just as wrong as he is. Let’s make this simple. Compare an AA 30 year old New Hire to an AA 45 year old new hire.

Cost of type-rating both is $15k. Assume both will upgrade in 10 years. Assume both will stay in the 737 or it’s equivalent throughout their career. Over the next 10 years both will make (at current year FO 737 rates) $1.897 million (counting 16% 401k). In the next 10 years, both will make equivalent money as a captain, to whit, an additional $3.22 million.

Average cost per year to pay the 45 year old who then retires has been $5.11 million divided by 20 or about 256,000 annually.

But the younger guy goes on for another 15 years, collecting another $4.83 million, making his total $9.94 million for 35 years, or 284,000 a year.

Over the course of his career, the 45 year old will save you $28K a year for 20 years or $560K compared to the guy hired at 30 because he will have spent a larger proportion of his career both as an FO AND at the low end of the pay scale.

Yeah, you’ll have to hire two guys to get the same number of years, but there is no shortage of qualified applicants at the major, and a type rating only costs about $15K, and the yearly pay will still be lower for the second guy. And the greater the age disparity, the more they save by hiring the old codger.

Which the mainline knows, which is why they will keep the flow times as long as they possibly can. Every year they drag out the flow makes personnel costs cheaper at mainline. They realize that, even if you don’t.

The purpose of flow is to keep pilots at the REGIONAL. They have no trouble keeping mainline staffed.

I just want to go on record that I was wrong for the initial post and apologize for the tone. I had a moment of frustration and decided to vent it here, a mistake. NH’s are not the problem, managment is, something we can’t forget. The moment we start turning on each other is when things get really bad for us.

I am however happy the topic has evolved and is getting discussion going.

The only part of your statement that is solid is the last two sentences.

Flow is to keep the regional feed staffed and not to keep wage cost lower 20~30 years from now and when DP is long gone.

You keep repeating the cost analysis of a younger Vs older NH and yes obviously your conclusion is right it’s cheaper to hire an older person vs younger. My position is two fold. They are more concerned about staffing regional flights today than wage cost 20+ years from now. Second 40 year old regional pilots are running out.

Come Jan 1st, new Republic CA upgrades will be making 6 cents more an hour then a 12 year Envoy E175 CA. Damn, that is depressing.

Not if we can trap them at a regional for a decade with a very slow flow to mainline. The thirty year old regional pilot BECOMES a forty year old regional pilot. :D

But you got flow....;)

We don’t have any 12 year CAs. We will soon say goodbye to all of our 7 year CAs. And the ones we do have are here by choice. Yep very depressing for those imaginary CAs.