With AA hiring 50 a week envoy needs to renegotiate the flow!

Rumor has it there’s an offer from the company to increase the flow numbers but there’s string attach to it.

 

And rumor has it the string is… ????

 

Are you referring to the extra flows if we hit our (lack of) attrition numbers?

 

If they don’t, there won’t be anyone left. It’s going to be tough for them to staff it with higher flow, but it would keep a lot more here.

if they really want to keep people, start giving a bonus ,paid now , that contractually guarantees a 5.5 year flow. It would keep most here for 5.5 years, the airline would be staffed, and the flow would actually be good.

 

If they really want to keep us here give us pay seniority at AA. U waste 6 years at Envoy and flow you start at 6 year 737 pay at American.

 

Interesting point, what are you willing to give up for that? To add to your statement, the cadets should also get the same starting from when they joined the program. Can this be retroactive.

 

That's not seniority, that's longevity, and anything that requires modifying the APA contract (which that would), will require APA ratification.

The reality is that all WOs are going to find themselves seriously lacking for pilots over the next year or two, in particular those pilots like instructors and LCAs who have the resume horsepower to move on to bigger and better things. No LCAs? No airline in pretty short order.

Pilots everywhere are leaving for Legacy carriers because the only thing that really matters in accumulating seniority (longevity is nice and all, but seniority is what gets you QOL in the long term) on a mainline list.

Easy solution? Operating 76 seat aircraft on a mainline list. AA, for its part, has been going to opposite direction and getting rid of Group 1 aircraft, and it's not uncommon for me to park next to a DAL 717 at most of our SE destinations.

 

UAL has indicated a desire to reduce 50 seat aircraft and I see a lot of Airbuses.

A realistic flow will help reduce the hemorrhage of pilots to ULLCs. But I think it’s a long way before things reach critical mass and implode even if they don’t change things. It’s still cheaper to pay lobbyists and buy off politicians than it is to pay pilots a better wage.

 

The problem is that the AAG business model REQUIRES regional feed and they DON’T (at least not yet) need flow. They can (at least at present) meet their mainline new hire needs by hiring ex military, hiring away competitors regional pilots, and hiring ULCC people who are still junior enough to be tempted. But increasing the rate of acquisition of their own regional pilots would just hurt their bottom line. They’d much rather hurt their competitors bottom lines by stealing their pilots than make it harder to keep their own regionals fully staffed.

And I really think if F9 and NK do something about their ludicrous first year pay, a lot of regionals are going to lose a lot of reasonably senior people.




This will be interesting to watch play out.

 

There is a cost benefit point at which increasing the flow is beneficial. Problem is it is REALLY hard to figure that point. Flow is about keeping pilots at the wholly owned as long as possible before they go to AA. In the current environment it is obvious flow is WAY too far away to keep those who have the qualifications and inclination to go elsewhere.

It is probably going to take a combination of better pay/retention bonuses and increasing flow to keep the WOs staffed.

The other issue of GUARANTEEING a flow time is that AA has to need the pilots at mainline and not as much so at the regional. And that has never been what flow is about. It’s always been about staffing the regional feed. I don’t want to say never, but the majors will never have a problem with staffing.