Envoy 2022: The Flow of Charlie Bucket
 

Happy New Year! Ric will finally get his wish and Charlie is getting his golden ticket to AA. Employee relations are at an all time high, and Pedro is a shadow figure of a CEO, but don’t you dare get sick more than three times when flying during a pandemic or face discipline. Be safe out there and expect scrutiny during this small blip in human history.

Pedro is AI generated prove me wrong

Oh come on. He’s been so vocal and been out there in townhall meetings and taken time to meet with employees. Wait…that’s Doug. You might be right. Be might just be a hologram.

Someone should submit Charlie’s application to United and see who picks him up faster. Welcome to the friendly skies.

Nice to see the former chair make his way to AA via ATI. Is that the cheat code? Go somewhere else and then beat your flow date?

You can’t argue against having a heavy type and time on your resume and you won’t get that staying at Envoy.

For one reason or another this does seem to be an effective strategy. There’s no data obviously but I know multiple people personally who jumped ship to various places (including corporate) who got picked up by dAAddy within 12 mos. It happens way too much to be a coincidence imo.

AAG isn’t dumb. They know if they hire a WO pilot before flow they gotta pay the bonus money to them AND to the WO pilots that have to flow anyway. It makes 0 sense for them to hire you or me while we’re still on property. If you voluntarily leave the WO, they don’t have to pay you a dime in bonuses.

Envoy has already lost you, so AA is no longer the one taking you away.

Am I missing something? If you took the bonus you have that money in the bank. If you wait until your flow to mainline, you get an additional 70 K plus the 50 K annual bonus. If you go straight to AA outside of the flow, they’re paying you 70 K anyways but not 50 K in retention bonus. How is AA saving money by not hiring you outside the flow? If you didn’t take the bonus they’re not gonna pay you a signing bonus anyway.

For what it’s worth I’m hearing now of more and more pilots getting CJO’s that aren’t anywhere near flow. Either the dam is about to break or more of us are starting to figure out the magic formula.

Either way you leave Envoy, you have to be replaced. If you get hired elsewhere then AAG doesn’t have to pay you either. If you stay to flow then Envoy gets you for longer.

The $2K a month up to $50K is a drop in the bucket compared to the other $100K (30+70) of that equation, especially if hired outside of flow. AAG didn’t come up with the idea of a RETENTION bonus to hire you early.

While you may have that first $30K in the bank, if you leave you have to pay it back.

Are you artistic? Anyone who took the retention bonus would have to pay it back unless they flow. So if they leave before flow, they just saved 30k right there.
When you flow, envoy gives you 70k on your last paycheck. If you leave before your flow, they don’t have to pay that. So they saved another 70k.
The other 50k is split over two years and is only paid out if you worked a certain amount of hours per year. So if you leave, you wouldn’t be eligible.

So if AA hired a future flow then they’d miss out on saving all that money. Or they can refuse to hire future flows and hire anyone else and not have to pay out.

That's a great theory, but take a step back and think about it for a minute or two.
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Let's not hire eagle people to save 100k and have the competition snag them. Profit!
Seriously?

They’re only losing cheap B scale labor. Meanwhile, thousands of non WO pilots are lined up outside AAG HQ that won’t cost $100k+ on day 1 of training.

The goal of the bonus was to continue to staff the regional for the next 2-3 years. Not so they can pay every WO pilot that gets an offer elsewhere $100k to skip flow.

Yes! That $100-150K was a RETENTION bonus to keep WOs staffed with captains, as was the flow. The flow alone has proved to not be enough but they obviously decided increasing it wasn’t the route they wanted to take.

Union just said next bid is likely to have some forced upgrades so it pretty obvious current “solutions” aren’t working to keep things staffed.

I saw more than a few who bid the 145 knowing it was junior and that they would leave before they got to training so could collect a few months of captains pay on the way out the door. IDK if the LOA providing captain pay as of award date allows Envoy to reduce pay if you give two week notice.

It's definitely way more than a few. They'll need a new vacancy bid

Even with as many are leaving, they are unlikely to run the next bid early. They will not be through the start of the training cycle for everyone on this bid that stays before the next bid closes. It just means those awarded in April will all be going to training sooner. Whether they are forward thinking enough to make the next bid bigger or do something to try and slow attrition is the big question, but knowing this company, if they do, it won’t happen by the next bid.

We told them Charlie wouldn’t need flow….

we were right again.

Burn baby burn. They can keep hiring, displacing, whatever. All our check airmen are getting hired, and ultimately to convert an ass in class into an ass in a seat they need to be able to train them.

So if you have a seniority higher than many that went to Captain on this bid, is it better to bid next time or just make the compnay force the upgrade? And if being forced is better than bidding, why would anyone bid?

Pay, PIC time (they’ll be in training sooner), etc.

Pay is better if you are forced and take a voluntary seat lock for 5 extra hours credit per month

It’s a gamble to try and get displaced.
A few years ago when they were displacing FOs to CA, a lot of people made a little extra money by getting themselves displaced instead of preference bidding. A few people also lost A LOT of money by getting stuck when the music stopped.

My advice: just bid what you want and don’t get cute.

not worth the gamble. It’s better to take the first available upgrade and build PIC time. Rather than wait 3-6 to for a displacement.

Displacements will almost certainly be to the 145. If you want 175, that’s what you should preference. It is pretty painful to go from the 175 to 145. Both the plane itself and the trips. 145 has more legs and less flight time than the 175.

if you get displaced to the 145 and want the extra 5 hours a month override, you will be locked to it for two years. Of course if you are junior, going to be tough to bid off of it in less than two years anyway.

There will be plenty of union guidance before the next bid, or if you want to see it before then, ask your captain if he has the old bidding email.

Don’t preference bid for anything you don’t want and know that if you don’t have all the displacement statuses listed and the company needs something you may get something you REALLY don’t want verses something that you just would prefer not to get. Back in the day there were more than a few that wanted 175 and couldn’t hold it but could have at least stayed in ORD or DFW on the 145 IF they had been on their displacement. Instead ended up in NY because they didn’t have the other listed and their number came up (actually came down) as displacements are initially reverse seniority to determine who gets the bone and then back down again with the actual assignments.

Example: MIA (175) FO really wants 175 MIA captain but would settle for DFW 175 or maybe even ORD 175 but doesn’t want to get stuck in ORD on the 145. Only lists the 175 statuses, but is low enough can’t hold any of them. Might could hold 145 DFW but if it wasn’t listed after the 175s could end up in ORD 145 that REALLY didn’t want because the company needs them and DFW wasn’t listed.

Probably clear as mid, but again, the bidding email will go into much more detail.

Yup to the above

3P for what you want, list every seat in 3D in the order of preference - want to stay in base and are junior-
175 dfw (you won't get it if you don't list it)
​​​145 dfw
145 ord (since 145 is junior to 175, you will be able to get back to base sooner on it)
175 ord/mia

Displaced into the left seat doesn't mean you're stuck (unless you take the voluntary seat lock for the extra $), put what you want in your 3Ps for the subsequent bids, eventually you'll get it

Don't leave your 3Ds empty/short. List all the CA seats in there however you see fit, otherwise you might find "NEB" next to your name and an award that would have been your last choice.

This is accurate. EM had two ENY guys in his class who were hired outside the flow. One was an FO. Interviews are becoming more common for WO pilots.

This isn’t a problem yet. We’re no where close to being maxed out on using SCAs and LCAs. I think the limiting factor right now is sim space but that’s just speculation on my part.

i'm surprised to hear that, since myself and many i know waited quite a while to do IOE and between trips on IOE, and the reason given was "lack of check airmen"

It may be fleet specific, but the friends that I talk to have said that they get one or two students a month.

How long did you have to wait for IOE, and when did you do it?

This is certainly not the case. I can tell you I’ve spoken to at least 4 LCA’s who had not done IOE consistently in the past couple of months. 2 had been waiting for students for a while and this is a small sample. I am more inclined to say it goes back to poor handling of the schedules on the company’s end, perhaps folks being out on vacation for year end festivities, etc.. I do believe they could be way more efficient with it.

Typical LOE to IOE wait time is about 3-4 days rn, why are we even talking about this? who cares.

Today’s hero of the day is the former DFW pilot who flowed to AA just a short time ago, cashed his check for $70,000 and is now in class at United. You sir have won the game of Life.

Good for them! Cha-CHING!

That pilot is my hero.

Is there not a requirement to stay a certain amount of time for that $70k?

Nope. That $70K is to keep you at a WO as the golden carrot on the end of the stick. You “earn it” by sticking it out until the flow or you’re hired OTS.

True legend. Especially after the way Envoy treated him a while back.

Who might we be talking about??