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Originally Posted by LoadMasterC141  Most Junior Captain at AE right now, according to APC, is almost 8 years.
From talking with the AE recruiters and several others that time will go down by more than three years sometime this year. This is because AE flowed back all the furloughed AA pilots after 9/11 and did not hire for 3 years.
I have also heard that AA is not pulling furloughed pilots back from AE as fast as originally anticpated due to Age 65 and the uncertainty caused by merger talks lately.
Finally, AMR has said they will sell AE off. That was 4 months ago. Some speculate it was said just to get rid of some annoying investors. Time will tell. I am not sure how it would affect AE alot, but time would tell.
My take, just as an observer...AE is a good company. AE pilots here at JC seem to be very happy. They pay decent and have a decent contract. Upgrade time sucks royally is the main thing. They pay good the second year versus TSA. |
Not really. APC's estimate of upgrade time is overinflated. Yes, the guys upgrading now have been here around seven or eight years. So we're upgrading the 2001 newhires. Now factor in things like there were THREE people on the SL from 2003.. and well.. it changes things. Expect upgrade to take around 4 years at present upgrade rates.
Also.. word has it from a guy I flew with the other day that he's about to be forced to flow up to AA. Apparently he was a TWA flowback.
AA recently induced a few key labor shortages by inadvertantly prodding a good number of pilots to retire. The slinky-action causes a slide up in both lists at AA and AE are a result.
AE's unlikely to be sold outright, as a whole. Who'd buy us? My theory- it's a hammer on APA's pilot negotiations. Putting us outside the AA umbrella is AMR's way of making us "codeshare" to try to circumvent APA scope restrictions. They're doing it to prod movement in the AE seniority list at the top end and yank APA's chain... and to pacify the investors.
On the other hand, some guys got fed up with sitting around here for five or six years and bailed for elsewhere. Skywest, for example.
I'd wager they hadn't expected to be sitting around on reserve flying 5 hours a month there... with nobody getting hired under them.
We still have shortages in the ERJ-145 department, especially in ORD. If you want in at Eagle, now's the time to do it.
If Merger-palooza starts and everybody stops moving, you don't want to be the one without a chair when the music stops.