There was a mass exodus from Eagle, however; when I resigned in 2007 there were stacks of jepp manuals and FMs (pre-digital obviously) in the CP office. That week, 40 DFW FOs had bailed.

The flow is a carrot. Always has been. And AA isn’t the prettiest girl on the dance floor.

 

So is this why AAG sold the undelivered 175s to Republic? The rest are going to RAH.

 

Look up N294NN from flightaware.

 

This is the case at Delta and United as well. That’s why they are seeing the light and trying to reduce the fleet types. But it will be a long and costly process.

 

Yeah, the combination of different type ratings with different pay rates (and different bases) and the seniority system creates a truly hellish training load when you are forced to furlough or return pilots from furlough. That’s one of the reasons Boeing came up with the dual 757/767 type rating to begin with. I’m not sure why Boeing abandoned that concept but Airbus sure picked it up and ran with it - in fact raised it to an even higher standard with their A320 ‘family’ allowing you to fly anything from A319/320/321CEOs all the way through A319/320/321NEOs and 321LRs and 321XLRs on the same type, with relatively minimum differences trading for 330s and 350s. And a multiple type fleet is also expensive for maintainers, both in terms of parts and maintaining experience on the specific fleet type.



The single fleet-type airlines like SWA, NK, and F9 have a huge advantage over AA, UA, and DL in this regard, and the former do seem to now be realizing that. The fact that a year “x” pilot on any of the aircraft can be assigned to any aircraft in the fleet but gets the same pay regardless is also a huge help, since bidding to a different aircraft type (assuming there were any) for more money causes a lot of expense in training as well, short term equipment locks notwithstanding.

But you are right, it is a long and costly process. And it will continue to hinder the three biggest legacies well into the time that the single fleet airlines are recovering. Especially AA which has furloughed.

 

Yeah. The market is predicting that AA will continue to lose money through 3rd quarter 2021.




That’s why they had to pay 12% to sell bonds this summer.

 

That is not true. There are handfuls each year when significant hiring is taking place, but those are almost always family and super hooked in networkers. If I had to pin it, I’d say 1 - 2% of all hiring, but it certainly happens. The only legacies still refusing anybody without one are Delta & FedEx. For all practical purposes, it may as well be zero though. Certainly nothing to plan a career on.

 

The sooner they get a CA to leave, the sooner they can replace him/her with a less senior cheaper CA. Flowing pilots faster keeps more junior pilots in the both seats.

 

Nope. Cheapest pilot the major can hire is retired military. The person is near zero training risk and he/she is probably 45 years old. So you got someone who already has a pension, already has pretty good medical coverage, and will only be around for 20 years - spending only eight years at the top of the scale. What they really DON’T want is some twenty-something zero-to-hero guy/gal who is going to be at top of the scale for three decades. It’s basic queuing theory.

And whatever savings they might get at the WO by getting rid of the top guy/gal by flowing them to the major are DWARFED by the savings they make by leaving them right at the WO. Every year they delay flowing that guy costs them a year of longevity for a FO and a CA at the WO which costs them what? $2 an hour for each of them?

FO pay at the WO starts at $50 an hour and goes up to $56 at year four. That’s less than $2 per year per year increase.
Similarly, CA pay goes up about $2 a year as well, so the cost to the WO of your seniority for the two pilots is $4 per hour per year per year.

So what does it cost AA per year once you do flow? Depends on the aircraft but for a A320 pilot the annual increase is about $9 an hour per year per year for an FO and $2 an hour per year per year.

Heck, they MAKE money for every year they keep you on the WO because that’s one year less they are going to pay you top scale at the major.

BUT DON’T BELIEVE ME. Find your own financial advisor and put the question to them. Let THEM tell you, it’ll be money well spent.

The most economically advantageous thing AA can do is to slow flow to the maximum extent they can that will still attract WO new hires. It isn’t personal with them. It’s just business. And with billions in debt, high debt service costs, a lot of disgruntled stockholders because they’ve had to sell so much stock at a reduced price it will have drastically diluted the earnings per share even when they do become positive, and a reduced sized fleet leading to open gates and slots with loss of market share to the LC/ULCC carriers who will recover more quickly, AAG needs to save every dime they can.

 

Not bitter about anything nor would it change the facts if I were. Certainly not rooting forward AA to go bankrupt and put pressure on everyone else to match a bankruptcy CBA. But facts are facts. The issue is the value of flow, not my emotions. The FACTS are that flow is a carrot and the stick it is dangling from got a WHOLE LOT LONGER when AA downsized their fleet, gave incentivized early retirement to some of their senior pilots and furloughed a bunch more. 700 pilots that once WOULD HAVE been retired over the next five years are already gone

and there are 1500+ more that have been furloughed. Generally you don’t furlough anybody you are going to bring back in a year because it isn’t cost effective.

And they severely cut back their fleet:


Newsroom - A fond farewell to five fantastic fleets - American Airlines Group, Inc.

Speaking generally you decrease the need for pilots by a factor of 12 for every plane you take out of the fleet. You want to talk Compass? Three or four years ago Delta took 7 E-170s away from Compass and Compass didn’t hire a new pilot for over 6 months. AA just pulled 80 off the line. Do the math. It has nothing to do with my feelings toward Compass.

AA major needs a thousand pilots less than it did. After early retirement they still needed 300 less than they kept. And they’ve got the better part of 1600 on furlough. That means a number of things to flow. There are a lot fewer (700 in fact) pilots retiring in the next five years than there once were. Nobody, doesn’t matter if they have command time on the Space Shuttle, is going to be hired before the furloughed pilots. Let’s say that with the reduced size of the fleet and the reduced retirements they are going to need another 600 pilots a year as the economy improves - and that’s a lot, the annual average for the last two decades is less than half that and don’t forget the people who retired prematurely who now won’t be opening up slots in the future:


Major New Hires 2000-2019. 20 yr total



That’s still over three years before there will be ANY AA new hires. So you can impugn my motives all you want, it doesn’t affect me an iota. What you can’t do is beat the math and the numbers.

Anyone working at a WO ought to have a REALISTIC idea about the value (or lack of it) of flow. If you don’t believe me, well and good, hire your own accountant or financial advisor and have THEM explain it to you. You are going to be investing years of your life making the jump to the next level. If you don’t understand the facts, pay someone for a few hours of their time to explain it to you.