Why would they kill their own feed when they can hire pilots from the competitions feed?

They are hiring a bunch from WOs outside the flow. No-one cares about what feed they are hiring from. That's an old APC story.

The flow formula, unless it is changed, will not be anywhere close to that. With the number they are talking, actual FLOWS will be something like 10-12%. Hiring from outside the flow from WOs (if that is what is being referred to), while good, is still not FLOW.

I know some of this will be basic, but I do appreciate your response. So, if AA flows whatever the contractual requirement is, and also hires outside the flow, is it correct to assume the outside the flow hires will be minorities, military, people with degrees, exc, and the "flow" will be non-degreed, young, people with DIU's, exc? What makes a pilot competitive outside the flow, and why wouldn't AA just guarantee a 5 year (pick a number) flow instead of the vague guestimates they use now? My assumption would be that even if they did take alot of their WO pilots, they would have no problem getting new people if there was a guaranteed timeline (or maybe even a flow at xx years or get xx yearly bonus to stay put?)

Figure the average career at mainline is 30 years. If you want to guarantee a five year flow time, your mainline pilot group has to be six times bigger than your regional group. The numbers just don’t work.

Hiring is crazy right now because retirements are crazy. That is going to end in five or eight years and the music will stop and people will be waiting for 10 or 15 years for a mainline job again.

If they were going to do any sort of guarantees like that it should’ve been five years ago, not now.

They are hiring guys that are actively applying, very competitive, and going to be picked up somewhere anyway. But economically it’s better for AAG if they keep their regional guys in the regional as long as possible. It isn’t malice, just business.

YOUR math doesn’t work either. Just because a mainline career can be longer isn’t what makes the math not work. But I do agree that trying to change the flow to a guaranteed TIME FRAME is very difficult to calculate and maintain over the long term. Five years ago even there was no way to know what would be happening now and would have been impossible to hire to guarantee a five year flow even though they have been advertising it as such. With no way to really know what is required at the regional and mainline level, it really difficult, if not impossible to manage very far out. That doesn’t excuse more actively managing thing now, in the shorter term.

It's neither. It's not even a consideration. They could not care less.

No, the relative length of a mainline versus Regional carrier is pretty much exactly what makes the math work. 9000 pilot airline with an average 30 year career will retire on average 300 people a year.

A regional airline that flows 300 people annually after a five year career needs to have 1500 people.