B757, no, I absolutely agree with you. It's been that way at AA since Pontius was a pilot. Right now they are limited at 40/month because of saturation at the school house. If they could, they'd go up to 70.

I just got out of recurrent last week. The 40/month is not even covering attrition/MLOAs/absences. They are drastically short every month. And now, with the B fund unit value where it's at, there is a lot of talk about a mass exodus of early retirements next spring.

Now throw in the threat of a job action, on top of the age 65 thing, and I think we'll see a lot more early outs. It's gonna get ugly next year.

BTW, yes, I'm still sticking to my 2009 off-the-street hiring prediction.

73

I have a very well placed AA pilot recruitment type that tells me with the combination of contract issues, and capacity issues, it's going to be mid to late 2009 before hiring starts..FWIW.

Most of the people in Recruitment are just doing their job, they are not planners of any kind. Except for the top person and my impression is that person would be "Clueless" until recieving the interview spoolup memo.
Most don't even realize that many CA's are approaching their best 5 of last 10 years. We at AA took pay cuts on May 03, so their could be alot of early retirements coming in Feb and Mar 08. Right now the general assumption is 200 maybe more to retire in Jan-Mar 08.
Also the evidence of furloughees defering can/will affect hiring.
Also if we don't give the company any more productivity in the next contract due May 08, then that has a huge relationship to getting furloughees back and possible hiring.