The big wage increases at the regionals were largely an artifact of the majors allowing early retires for their most senior pilots back when they anticipated a sustained industry wide recession. They basically took three years worth of retirements all at once. The surprisingly quick rebound of demand created a hiring surge at the majors that drained the regionals of their CAs and senior FOs. Soon the regionals were parking aircraft because they didn’t have enough CAs to fly them or enough FOs senior enough (and willing) to upgrade. And it wasn’t getting better, because their CAs were being hired by the majors (and their senior FOs by the ULCCs) faster than they could get their FOs who were willing to upgrade up to the 1000 hours making them eligible to upgrade. The only real solution was to hire DECs which required not just the money for the DECs but contract revisions to bring existing payscales up to the point that the CA’s were equal to the DECs and might actually stay around a few years while FO rates were brought up to where those who were near 1000 hours would actually stick around and actually become CAs who would hopefully fly sufficient hours as a CA to qualify their FOs to eventually upgrade.

That whole mess was sort of a COVID related disturbance in the market that is unlikely to be repeated any time soon. I doubt that regional payrates will actually be decreased, just allowed to drift down with pay increases of less than the inflation rate. Because yeah, with NK in bankruptcy and F9 not making much money, and the like, the market is starting to readjust toward historic norms.

 

it will go to 5 once the last of the pre-covid hires flow. It's 6 years right now for those flowing in the next annoucement. They were hired pre-covid and sat here for 1 year 3 months on property when there was no flow. Once the last of them flow, the covid gap will close and the next flows will be 5 years on property.

 

Doing some quick math, understand its hard to predict. So roughly a 6 year flow time now? If someone was a mid 22 hire would we expect them to still be in a 6ish year flow or would it be closer to 7 potentially?

 

Where’d you hear 7 years? I have a buddy who has been here for 4.8 years he told me someone 18 seniority numbers above him got the call to flow. Will it fluctuate based on AA hiring and aircraft deliveries, yes, but a 7 yeah flow as of now? I’m skeptical that’s the reality right now. All the pre covid hires have flowed for the most part so the flow is probably going to stay right around 5 years unless PSA tries to sabotage that.

 

I’ve been hearing rumors that with Spirit going belly up, the pilots who just lost their jobs will get preferential interviews at AA and UA. While I’m hoping they all get hired at various airlines, I’m just wondering if this will have any effect on the flow time. Does anyone have any insight?

 

The time to flow will likely increase. With spirit pilots getting picked by AA, and with the increase in fuel prices, could very likely increase the time to 7 years or beyond as the majors start to scale back on the amount of growth and hiring they were anticipating.

 

Don't know yet. Right now, the most recent flows went at 5.2 years from date of hire. Current rate of flows is 10-14 a month, but if we ever get to vote on PBS implementation, that number will increase. Too early to know right now what will happen with Spirit. It says somewhere in the contract regarding flow that AA will run flows every month they run new hire pilot training. So as long as AA continues to run classes, even if 90% of the classes are Spirit hires, they should still be bound to flow the contractual minimum.

 

That makes me feel better, and I hope you are right. It’s a rough time for all the Spirit guys. I hope they all come out okay.

 

That’s assuming classes are running. AA usually pauses classes in the summers too. If the economy contracts hard due to fuel prices skyrocketing, which hopefully it won’t, then classes may not be running for awhile. This industry has had many unexpected surprises in the past, including recently with Covid. Not trying to suppress ur hopes, just simply plan for the worst, hope for the best type of thing.

 

You're not wrong, that's a possibility given the state of the economy. But if that happens all the other airlines will be likely doing the same thing so none of us would be going anywhere anyways. About AA pausing for summer, this year they paused for May and June. It remains to be seen if they decide to do "make up" flows to catch up for no flows this past May and June. They did this last year in the fall during the lower flying season. I hope that they do.