This is an extremely unimpressive cast.

 

100 % correct.

 

Those "90's babies" were 16-18 when 08' happened. Nothing butterflies about the second largest economic contraction in 150 years.

 

Perhaps the real value of a degree is that it certifies your ability to withstand vast amounts of abuse while pretending to like it.
This is an important skill in our industry.

 

Nail on the head. It shows the ability to survive, self teach, and navigate a bloated system. Doesn’t matter what you actually learned, it’s that you demonstrated you can learn without having your hand held the whole time.

 

Plus you are so loaded with debt, you are not likely to wiggle much.

 

It would seem like, intentional or not, flow would be likely to do two things:
1. It would disproportionately attract those with black marks. One could debate whether or not such things as multiple failed checkrides, no college degree, or multiple DUIs or other run-ins with the law actually do predict your performance as an airline or not, but these (and other) black marks certainly have been used as discriminators, rightly or wrongly. But there is little doubt that those people with such black marks are being ADVISED to go to an AA wholly owned. You see that all the time on APC.
2. It would pull in those risk averse, the ones that are willing to wait a decade for the supposed ‘surge thing’. Again, it’s probably arguable if that is a good or a bad thing in a major airline pilot. But at least in some respects it well might be a negative, particularly when we see regionals with flow (or quasi flow, see Alaska/Horizon), having either to resort to DECs, near-DECs, or forced upgrades because their upgrade eligible FOs won’t bid on the upgrade.

All in all, it would appear that a flow over time would act to concentrate in the regional an increased percentage of people that the major wouldn't have voluntarily recruited OTS.

That makes me wonder if, after eight or nine years of waiting, people aren’t going to see their flow programs abruptly terminated if the major is not contractually bound to that program, and maybe even if they are. The management at the major certainly has more legal horsepower than the unions at most regionals.

 

What you are forgetting is, that the WO's normally don't hire the DUI/multiple failed checkride folks. They might have done that for a brief while in 2016 or so, but not any more.
Today, that's what Mesa is for.

 

Lol. Maybe at the moment. What happens when the will runs dry? Everyone's standards ebb and flow. Those standards haven't been tightened up for that long, certainly not since 2016.

 

Indicating they will do it again as soon as recruiting gets as skosh as it did in 2016 and the major retirement/hiring wave is still years from peaking.

And seriously, look on the ‘career’ threads, anyone who asks about whether they can ever make it to a major because of bad marks in their career or a lack of a degree are being advised to go to a wholly owned.

Once again, one can debate whether those alleged ‘black marks’ or the presence or absence of a four year degree actually MEAN anything, but there is little doubt that those with them are being disproportionately channeled into AA wholly owned regionals. And in nine years - when the retirement/hiring wave peak has passed - are those really the people AA is going to want in preference to separating/retiring military and other unblemished OTS hires? I woukdn’t Be too sure.

Without actual contractual language the flow is vaporware. Even with it, it’s your (regional) union against management and who has the big gun lawyers in that face off? I wouldn’t even bet on APA siding with the regional unions.

We’ll see in about eight or nine years I guess, which of course is damn near an eternity in this business.