No, I wasn't really clear. They'll flow. But for anyone not already on property, or hired right at the beginning of this program, I imagine it will take an extremely long time, I predict 7 to 10 years, assuming hurting continues. Same goes with Pied, PSA and Envoy.

 

If you look at the retirement numbers in the next 5 years, anyone already at the regionals will have either upgraded, or moved on to bigger and better things. Anyone coming on in the next year or two will likely upgrade quick and move on quick as well. Even though the AAG wholly owned flows are currently projecting a long time, retirement numbers tell a different story.

 

I agree with you. Regional pilots will make it to a major with or without a flow, provided that they don't have excessive checkride failures or other issues.

At PSA (I hate to keep bringing PSA up, but it applies here), there have been a lot of new hires lately that came in with a great deal of experience. Mostly Endeavor guys, but also some Mesa, Envoy, part 135/91, etc... Those guys already have 7-10 years in the industry, and are just as attractive to some of the Majors and LCC's as guys much senior to them.

PSA is now losing more people off of the bottom 1/2 of the seniority list than we are losing off of the top 1/2 of the list. This will likely continue, and accelerate. I know a few guys went to United, Delta, and JetBlue, a couple guys went to work for the FAA, others to 121 cargo companies.

This will be true of many other airlines that get a lot of lateral transfers. Dates of flow are completely unpredictable.

 

Yea, I've been seeing a lot of new hires from all sorts of backgrounds, almost all of them have at least a couple thousand hours of jet time. Lots of movement like you said, but mostly from the FO side of things. Some CAs are leaving, but most of those that are within 2-3 years of flowing are now planning on staying put. Surprisingly, not many that had chose to stay from the SSP we had have decided to move on with the direct flow. That leaves about 50 on the top of the list who aren't going to leave.

The biggest difference between the AAG wholly owned regionals and other regionals is that what we have are ACTUAL flows. No interview, no degree, no job fairs. They call your number, and you either go or you don't. No other regionals offer this. No other regionals offer true flows. I think this is important because the truth is, legacies will NEVER have any trouble hiring candidates. And as we've seen with Endeavor, PSA in the past, and other regionals with preferential interviews, that in no way guarantees an applicant anything.

 

I was told that the true reason for us delaying the CRJ 700 flying was due to the Aspen flying. Supposedly, PSA wasn't able to get the FAA approval for the special Aspen operation. It has to be the CRJ 700 as the EMB175/145 or CRJ 900 do not have the performance. I would speculate though, that eventually, PSA would get the flying approved or maybe they will move that route back to mainline. In either case, it doesn't make financial sense that envoy would continue to operation a sub 20 aircraft fleet indefinitely.

 

SkyWest might be the missing piece to that puzzle.

 

Yeah, that is true. I didn't think that someone else could get the approval. Whoever it is, I am told that the whole process is long and painstaking.

 

Skywest is already approved for 700s into ASE. They already fly them into ASE for United.

Sorry, I know it hurts to think somebody besides Envoy is good enough to fly in there.

 

True, but rumors are that United don't want Skywest flying for AA in Aspen. And when your biggest client is United, you don't want to get lose flying because you accepted a contract.

 

Never heard that one. Good thing we don't already fly there for multiple carriers...oh wait.
With the Q parking, an exclisivity contract could be very very lucrative though. (Don't see that happening though)