TransWorld

The expression fat, dumb, and happy comes to mind. Well, maybe not fat.

CRJdriver2017

If you beat the flow you aren’t the norm. Unless you went to another carrier.

AirBear

Neighbor of mine who was at PSA tried to get on with AA because of the CLT base but they wouldn't take him outside of flow. Delta interviewed him as he was approaching 1000 hours SIC. He was hired and now is doing OE on the A320 New York based. Great guy, AA's loss.

CRJdriver2017

Yeah it’s an extremely common theme at psa. I was there almost 5 years. Some people successfully got hired at AA by leveraging other CJOs. But I tend to think for every 1 who was successfully there were 20 who weren’t. I wasn’t successful.

BurnerAccount69

Direct hire, mid 2017 hire date. Not the norm for sure, I saw a breakdown of AA hiring and its a super low percentage of street hires. Interesting to see how long its taking to get out of PSA purgatory.

AVSkate

My guess is that the guys that aren’t leaving are satisfied with making >250K$ and getting pretty much anything schedule that they want for a year or three until they flow. They likely won’t have the quality of life that a PSA line holder has at any major for a very long time. Hindsight blah blah blah, but I would not have minded sticking around.

WhyIFly

Most pilots seem to be getting out now from the middle of the list. For some reason, the pilots at the top seem to be hanging around, and the ones at the bottom are still building 121 time.

What these guys don't understand is that the "sweet spot" to get hired at the legacy airlines has already passed and they need to get in to a final career job now. All of the legacies have hired a few thousand young guys in the last couple years already. If you get hired at a legacy 18 months from now, you are probably looking at a 10+ year upgrade, and it could be much closer to 20 years.

AA has 5000 pilots with 20 years left. Also, currently, AA has 5500 captains total on their list. What happens when AA hires 2500 more in the next 18 months? That will be much closer to 7000 pilots under the age of 45. Poof. 20 year upgrades.

moabmatt

Everyone has their reason, I suppose, even if it’s laziness…which isn’t always a bad thing. Hey, as long as they’re happy.

Anyway, what blows my mind more than the number of regional pilots staying put is the number of pilots who have left the regionals for mainline yet still frequent the regional forums. I don’t get it. I’d think with all that extra money and time there’d be better things to do.

Equally puzzling is when I see these same pilots still complaining about their new gig at mainline; complaining about contracts, management, schedules, unions, etc. Seems like some folks just have a hard time being happy regardless of their situation, all the while telling others how unhappy they should be with their situation.

captande

Going to be interesting for sure. Super rates have a sunset date but additionally those rates will be first to go if AA declares bankruptcy. Regardless of what they’re making now the safest place to be is on a mainline seniority list.

BurnerAccount69

Yea, with so much uncertainty about the next few years economically, I wouldn't want to be stuck on a regional seniority list.