well good, at least it’s not a total shot in the dark anymore.

 

technically 2 yrs ago it was "planes, we will try to capture the west coast flying, not necessarily with 175s"

 

what month was your class?

 

If they can get the flow up to, say, 35/month, our flow will be attractive for new hires. Right now, knowing what I know now, I wouldn't bother coming here as a new hire unless you plan to live in a junior domicile; the flow is far enough out of reach that you'll have missed your opportunity to have a decent seniority number. A flow of 35 per month would nearly guarantee that a new hire today would flow in 5.0-5.5 years without outside attrition.

That said, flow looks like a huge PITA for training and recruitment with all the turnover and training events created. Out of curiosity, if Envoy's training department is operating at full capacity, what's the potential turnout of new pilots monthly?

As a few of you alluded to: regardless of flow, recruiting is going to ramp up significantly at all majors and the regionals are going to get purged of pilots. The only real way to get the majority of pilots to stay here or PSA and Piedmont is to give us AA seniority numbers with contractually guaranteed employment at AA. I know I wouldn't bother leaving for DAL/UAL/SWA/FDX/UPS if I had an AA seniority number. Is it wishful thinking? Probably. Is it probably the only realistic scenario in which AA's wholly-owned regionals don't get decimated by the legacy/LCC hiring? Definitely.

 

I am not sure what the threshold is for training, but would put it around 20-30 month to be at a comfortable level, otherwise the costs and times would go way up. The days of seeing 90 new hires a month are gone as that well has been tapped and the struggle to get those through training was enormous.

In terms of an AA seniority number, while the best option I can see, is unlikely as they would be afraid of the cost. It would solve all of AA's potential issues going forward. It would allow pilots to stay at the regionals longer knowing they already have seniority at mainline, helping to stop what will be a regional glut in the coming years. I just cant see how else they will do it as I honestly dont think recruiting 25 people a month is going to stop what could be a huge outflow of Captains in the next year or so. I know many who have less than 2 years left to flow that are actively trying to get hired at any major that will take them. If these people start getting picked up, it will spell trouble for the regional.

The next year should prove interesting for sure but I think the route they will take is just a free for all hiring bonanza where each major is trying to steal pilots from their competitors.

 

I agree with you on all accounts. I think 2020 will be telling as far as what the trend is going to look like for major hiring, regional recruitment + retention.

Five of the last seven captains I've flown with have CJOs at Delta for class dates early this year. Not sure if it's coincidence or there is a trend here where major carriers are going to target their competitor's regional feeds.

 

If we lose tons of captains this year to attrition, flow is going to get throttled. Anyone have the flow formula handy? What's the lowest we could flow per our LOA?

 

5 for the post DOS group. That would be a lot of shrinkage though.

 

And yet all the folks over at PSA talk about their flow picking up in the coming years. We may not see more than 25 a month, but if PSA ramps up theirs AA will find a lot more pilots.

(I don’t know what PSA’s flow rate is now but their pilot group is nearly the size of Envoys)

 

It's a flat 10/month, and I believe we're somewhere around a total of 2070 on the list (including training). Our flow is not based on size, but rather our agreement to senior-man upgrades via LOA.