If that were the case, you'd have a rack of paper marriages...

Company car should also be provided 😬

It is, you get $5 cash to bribe the rundown holiday inn shuttle driver up the street.

I ordered my new uniform in early August 2018, still haven’t received my hat.

From the pilot’s perspective, I think the concept of flow is great because even a clean record with all the boxes checked doesn’t guarantee you’ll ever get called for an interview. Contrarily, the fact that regional’s have taken roughly ~50% of the flying away from mainline over the past few decades makes the concept of regionals essentially a B-scale and byproduct of mainline giving up scope for cash. The fact that flow even exists at all is stupid; AA should be doing all their own flying.

That said, from the company’s perspective, I also think flow is also stupid. Why take the discretion out of the hiring process? I know OP was trying to humor us, but it’s weird that AA is the only major carrier that has a pathway program without any interview.

There are a lot of great people flowing to AA, but there are also some people that’d make you stare in wonderment as they would never get hired off the street at any LCC/Major/Legacy and they’re ending up at AA. Seems bad for AA to welcome in a bunch of undesirables that served out their sentence at ENY/PSA/PDT.

I actually have a suspicion about that...

I think AA may have (correctly) concluded that they're going to have to hire all of those people ANYWAY in the near future, degree or not, warts or not, so they cooked up this flow thing to get to keep them content with lower pay and attract flies to their regionals. Seems to be working like a charm.

Very good point.

I'm skeptically optimistic about the retirement wave ongoing at the Big 6. I hope everyone that puts their best foot forward gets a rewarding career at one of the major carriers. It's pure speculation as to how it's going to play out and how it's going to effect competitive minimums to get hired, but I think - to your point - that AA is actually proactive in crafting a flow-thru in that it's keeping their regionals staffed.

I do think most of us can agree we're overdue for an economic correction. Hopefully it's nothing crazy, but that could throw a wrench in the movement to mainline for everyone depending on the severity and cause of the downturn.

I do think it's odd, however, that PSA has been struggling to recruit and had to resort to raises. The flow is working but to a point.

I think folks are realizing that they can *most likely* get hired faster OTS, whether from an AA regional or any other regional. So they might as well get paid more while they wait, unless they have known black marks going in, or are just very risk averse. I can't really fault the last, you're always one checkride away from being a great candidate to getting moved down about 5,000 apps from the top of the stack.

"near future" being 20+ years from when the flow started?
I don't think they were that visionary back then.

Agreed. Plus it keeps their contracted labor source somewhat adequately staffed in the meantime to fuel profits and keep investors happy. What is really going to suck for these poor folks is when the retirement flood gates open and the strong economy is still humming along. At that point AA will either have to A) flow everyone (spoiler alert: that will never happen), or B) merge with one of the smaller LCC/ULCC airlines - the more likely scenario for a multitude of reasons.

At that point the "flow thru" will be more like a "stay put in your RJ for another five years" and all of the 90s babies will be p*ssed because for the first time in their careers things won't be all rainbows and butterflies.