Been here for a little over a year now. What is the current time to flow to AA? Any predictions on if the flow time will keep coming down or if it’ll go back up again?

 

Per ThatChecks :

That being said, it will only remain five years as long as there is no slow down in hiring.

 

Which is affected by AA retirement numbers that peaked this year and will then decline considerably.

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Another factor is failing or threatened major airlines. NK at peak had almost 3800 pilots. JetBlue has 4K and F9 2K plus. The legacies are snapping these people up.

AA Interviews

That makes direct flow from the regionals to a legacy harder.

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Absorbing NK pilots might totally saturate the major hiring for a year. People bailing from JetBlue, Frontier, Breeze, Allegiant, etc., will only add to that - to the detriment of regional hiring.

 

I’m in agreement with you. I’d put money on the 5 years getting longer rather than shorter.

 

Unless they have changed it recently, every month in which AA holds a class, 10 PSA pilots flow. It doesn't matter how many AA is hiring or whether there is a surge of pilots from elsewhere - if they hire in a given month, 10 PSA pilots flow. That could change. AA can also game the system and run classes every other month. But on the whole it's reasonable to expect about 100 flows/year from PSA to AA indefinitely. The huge unknown is how many people leave PSA for other jobs. That's what really drives flow times.

 

Yep. Flow times are determined primarily by the success rates of those who DO NOT flow but are instead picked up outside the flow.

 

these have been the latest flow announcements

-2025-
August - 35
September - 30
October - 30
November - 30
December - 10

-2026-
January - 41
February - 25

 

The only reason they flowed that many is because anyone who has the flow preference set to yes and stays more than five years on property goes to top of pay scale. No point paying 50% more for pilots when you don’t need to. Just ship them off to AA faster and the overall payroll cost will plummet.

So it would be the best interest for management to get everyone’s flow to five years, and I’m sure they’re gonna do everything they can to try to keep it around that to cut down on labor costs.

But there’s another thing to consider: the proline upgrades weren’t approved. Yall are 2 to maybe 3 years away from having to park airplanes and cannibalize them to keep other ones flying. The amount of flying you can handle as a direct correlation to how many captains you have. You might be flowing 40 a month, but you’re only upgrading 14. The seniority list will shrink with that kind of behavior. What’s it at now? 1700? 1600? I remember when it was over 2200. I would love to see a historical comparison of the block hours awarded to Psa from 2024 versus 2025 and compare each month to see what exactly is happening.

in 2-3 years piedmont will start getting the e175 deliveries if memory serves me right… I don’t think I need to connect the dots for anyone. Psa parks planes in 2-3 years at the same time piedmont gets their new ones. Even if you get used airplanes from Europe (Lufthansa, SAS, Iberia) The aftermarket parts support is still severely lacking. I’d be nervous.

 

They are upgrading 14 captains every two weeks, sometimes more. On a monthly basis, that still results in roughly a 1 for 1 captain replacement. The most recent captain vacancy was around 30 pilots.



They also have a large number of cadets who have taken money and are still waiting on class dates. The company is trying to bring them on as soon as possible before they leave for someone else.



As for the CRJ being phased out, I don’t see that happening anytime soon.