Flow Negotiations
 

Why isn’t alpa pushing hard for a faster flow to make up for years with no flow! They have renegotiated before. Time to bump up the rate since most will be off the street soon.

Uhhh, maybe because with guys already at AA facing FURLOUGHS, it’s a pretty steep hill to climb right now. Before AA starts hiring through the flow, they’d actually have to be hiring...

yeah, not a chance. According to thekooj AA wants Envoy to grow. There is no chance they increase flow to make up anything when hiring starts back up. They do not want to decimate their growing Regional network. As a matter of fact, as AA hiring increases expect the percentage of Flow pilots in each class to decrease.

Yeah, it would be all air though, given the flow requires AA to be hiring, a position they are not currently in.
Agreed.
We have in the past we have been offered significant gains to the flow numbers during rough times for AA, so it isnt without precedent. Sadly at the time our pilot group thought we were more valuable than we were and AA showed us exactly where we could stick the counter offer. Needless to say if we taken it, we would have all been there by now.

I diverge, the idea that AA may come looking for concessions or renegotiations, or if APA pushes hard against any talk of scope relaxing, the flow formula could be retweaked. We need to remember that formula was designed when AA needed lots of pilots but didn't want to decimate their regional feed. I dont think we are anywhere near that level of hiring so who knows.

Right give up more money for a maybe flow.

Just to clarify, I wasn't supporting the idea of giving anything up for flow, just pointing out that even with depressed hiring it could be something that comes up with negotiations.

Do you all not realize now is the time to negotiate flow while it has little or no value? Once it does they will want more.

Of course, hence why I mentioned the time this came up during BK. It’s what has to be given up that becomes the question.

Lets do it! Can the union also hire Cujo665 to be the negotiating chair?

With the turn of events the past year, I am not willing to give up my seniority to go to AA only to get furloughed, no way Jose!
I think ALPA should make The Voy a sweet place to stay for the majority of us that can call Envoy home until retirement, just my 2 cents.

pls be satire

See slurpee machines in crew rooms? Me neither.

This reminds me... can we get the B terminal popcorn machine and ping pong table moved to terminal E?

When do you guys think AA will hire again? Serious question.

When they’ve unparked their last aircraft they intend to keep.

DL is said to spool up pilot selection late Q4 '21/early Q1 '22. That's in order to compensate for early outs and projected Summer '22 flying. I would guess that AA will have to hire around the same time due to the sheer momentum of upcoming retirements.

where did you heard this?

Only problem is they still have to retrain all the furloughed pilots through long term. It could be a few years before they’re in a position to hire.

From what I understand it’s not a full long term. I could be wrong though.

It would only be a full long term if changing equipment, otherwise it’s about a 5 day training footprint.

I would venture to guess that all of them will be going through long term. Half didn’t finish training, a large portion was based in NYC, and they are recalled based on what is needed and they’ll have to re-bid for aircraft like new hires.

The post this was answering was a question about AA furloughs, not ENY. You are probably correct about ENY.

Some of the furloughs from AA would be from the E190 so they’ll obviously need long term on something else. Hopefully a lot of the furloughees from the 73 and ‘bus were already on the plane they wanted. I don’t honestly know how the recall works in their contract. Does anyone know if the pilots get to pick their new aircraft or if the company assigns it? Assuming they are offering both NB aircraft.

This seems to be what I have heard as well. How long it will take to get through 1800 or so pilots is anyones guess, I was thinking 18 months, with 100 a month going in. Obviously COVID could speed up or delay that as could efficiency at AA's training department.

thx. Regarding AA, does anyone know how many training events were caused by parking the 190/757/767 & A330 plus opening crew bases for wide bodies in CLT? The cost has to be astronomical.

If the majority of the events are really just 5 days, I’m sure they can do it faster than that if they want to. The “if they want to” is an important caveat.

5 days is not much morethan a recurrent cycle. They already do at least 15000 of those a year. Adding 1800 shouldn’t be too hard.

Yeah that is a fair point and one I thought of. Keep in mind they still have recurrent to compete for the active ones plus now these and also COVID concerns. Obviously the COVID issue should diminish over time.

Ultimately, like you said, it will come down to how quickly they feel the need to have them back. I don’t think they will need all 1800 back right away.

So would you say hiring won’t start back up till summer of 2022?

ALL MD80 E190 B757 B767 A330-300 pilots will pretty much require new types, but it is far worse than that. There’s a domino effect. The senior pilots tend to bid the popular bases and most lucrative equipment. Junior people get what’s left. But the PSP has stopped that domino effect - so you have senior guys not flying currently that will outbid the junior guys in the same equipment, at least for upgrades and possibly for displacements.

it will be a fustercluck for the first year or two.

I stick with my guess of Q1 '22. Upthread I mentioned the rumors around DL hiring as early as Q4 this year. While DL didn't officially furlough, they had a large number of early outs, a very large number of people sitting UNA (unassigned) for awhile, and some new hires who never made it through the initial cycle. This is in addition to fleet retirements and base closures that shuffled alot of bodies.

The point of mentioning DL is that AA has all of that as well as substantially more projected (pre-Rona, so some adjustment via early outs) retirements over the next 5-10 years. Will AA go into 2022 a smaller airline that it was in Q1 2020? Yes, but so will DL and UA. Just to maintain that smaller airline in the face of retirements, AA will have to hire. In order to fly the summer '22 schedule, grab market share, and eventually return to its previous size as the industry recovers, AA will have to hire. Take all that for what it's worth, but I also wouldn't give into the apocalyptic doom and gloom.

Yeah AA will come out of all this, much like the other big three. What will need to happen in order to get there is anybody’s guess. Shrink, BK 11, concessions, a little of both? It really is a shot in the dark and we all have our theories, but they are best educated guesses.

I truly hope they recover quickly, lots of amazing pilots working for them that need it to happen.

You make very good points. AA will have to hire in 2022 but my guess is it won’t be what we saw prior to COVID. For those who got hire prior to the fall of 2016 I say you can add another 1 to 2 years to their flow time.

Addition to flow? I think we're talking about an extra 2 years at minimum. Perhaps 3 years. I don't think it's longer than that though.

But an extra 1 year? We're already at the extra year with mainline pilots still out that need to be pulled back in and trained before we get to hiring/flowing.

Yea my bad. I mean on top of this already.

Gotcha. Sorry, I might be a bit trigger happy. What you say makes sense if one considers this past year already gone, which it is.

Haha Naww is all good! This whole thing has got everyone like that. No worries.

Just read the AA mainline thread where they talk about LOA’s being approved like crack cocaine in the last bid. That’s pretty much sums up the realistic timeframe of AA hiring picking back up.