Fixed it for you.

If americans hiring rises, why wouldn't the flow rate rise and cause a decrease in the time to flow? I just interviewed with you guys and was going to jump in.

I don't think American ramping up their hiring would really affect the flow rate. The flow doesn't exist to help American fill classes, the flow exists to help the three whole owneds fill classes. If the flow vanished tomorrow, AA wouldn't bat an eye, they would just take more people off the street. There's certainly no shortage of applications.

A lack of flow knowledge like this (from applicants) is exactly what hurts the wholly owneds.

thats why I'm asking on a forum. the company doesn't provide much information during the interviewing process

Flow is just a bargaining chip. It's just a point of negotiation between the Piedmont pilot union and Piedmont management, it's one thing they can offer instead of, say, higher pay scales or better schedules.

The reason the flow is really short (<5 years) for some people is because they were hired at the front end of a hiring boom that exploded 4-5 years ago. The company was much smaller before that, so those hired at the beginning of that hiring boom had almost instantaneous seniority. That is NOT the case anymore. In fact, the company is not growing anymore. Someone hired today will build seniority very slowly, because they're stuck behind that massive group of people hired 2015-2017 and will have a very long flow (all external factors the same).

The flow can’t/won’t increase much at all because piedmont and the other WO’s can’t afford to let anymore people go per month and still staff their respective airlines. Rumor has it American approached piedmont about increasing the flow last year and piedmont shot it down.

Piedmont is the only Wholly Owned regional that did not receive a favorable flow increase in 2018. Both Envoy and PSA did because their Unions engagement on that front. Piedmont’s Union leadership decided that the flow was not important to the majority of the pilot group compared to the things it elected to negotiate (pilots paying for own hotels so that could collect points, increases in extensions so pilots could block more hours, 2% pay raise for captains only etc.) for in the failed TA. According to the union folks, there’s no discussion of changed to PDTs flow since the TA shootdown either.

What you see is what you get. The only way the flow will increase is if PDTs pilot group gets larger. With no growth after the 60th aircraft announced, flow will not be increasing beyond 6/month that way things are.

I think us not increasing flow is the fault of management not being able to train pilots.

Think about it- we constantly have uncovered trips. How could they agree to lose more pilots every month when we don't have enough line qualified guys as it is?

Most of our problems come back to the fact that this place is god awful at training pilots. So much could be fixed if they were competent at their jobs.

The union leaves much to be desired but I don't fault them for no increase in flow.

I found myself constantly checking the seniority list and trying to make the math work to back-up the recruiter's claim that the flow was under 5 years. Unless there is a new form of math that I am unaware of, there is no way it is possibly true, especially if hired today. I really wish Piedmont was not my first 121 gig. I ultimately made the decision to leave because my wife and I could not see any benefit to staying. Horrible trips, with one or two legs per day, I was logging about 2.5 hours per day towards the end of my tenure.

1) 5 year flow=flat out lie.
2) 1 year upgrades=flat out lie (for no 121 experience anyways)

It took me a long time to realize the flow was simply a carrot on the end of a stick, which Piedmont uses to keep you trudging along and putting up with BS in order to have the dream job somewhere down the line. With the flow rate the way it is now, going somewhere with much better pay and the ability to log some real flight time is more important.