I would say that’s due to limited off the street hiring by AA. You’ll probably see a lot more from here going forward.

I think AA will be hiring a lot more regional captains to fill those entry level slots than they will be poaching 4th year ULCC Captains. They’d have to then upgrade at AA before they Even STARTED to offset the pay they were giving up to make the switch and they would never recover the lost seniority. And while the money would even out - by year 12 or so - and then be a net gain for the switch, you’d still spend a lot of those first years as furlough bait and quite possibly commuting to reserve someplace you don’t want to be before - finally - getting a line.

you’ll get a few, but for most, it just won’t be worth it.

He watched one too many Swayne videos it seems.

I guess we’ll see. Upgrade on the 737 just went to 2.5 years.

I just can't see large numbers of ULCC/LCC Captain's or senior FO's making the jump to AA when you have any longevity at all. This would include NK, JetBlue and Frontier. In my case, 6th year CA pay at NK....240k in 2019 with 28k into my DC 401 averaging 15 days off each month not on reserve. To start over at AA with 20 years left? Even the guys who have 30 years left, there aren't many....that I know of...that would leave the pay and QOL for AA. Like the poster above said, after slogging it out through training and getting online and on reserve, you could be furlough meat for a couple of years. I could see more numbers of less than 2 year very junior ULCC/LCC FO's making the jump though.

To answer your question, we had 4 pilots leave for AA last year. IIRC all are very junior FO. I flew with one of them. Her dad is a very senior 737 CA at AA. There’s 22 pilots who left Envoy to come to Spirit last year, some were close to a flow. I would think if AA was so great they would have waited. Same with the guys who left PSA and didn’t wait for the flow.

Now here is the big question, how many left AA for Great Lakes?

It's that shiny prop syndrome. There's always someone.

Props are for boats.

And how long before that junior captain actually holds a line?

and for bonus points, how long before they hold a line anywhere but PHL or LGA? :D