AA To Cancel 55 More 777 and 767 Flights

[IORFA]

Probably, but when has that stopped AA before? By the way, are the furloughed pilots still passing in LARGE numbers?

 

[StraaightTaalk]

Gee...Great planning. Somebody will probably get a massive bonus for this.

 

[Mach85ER]

Probably against somebodys' union rules.

To complete a total transition school on an aircraft is roughly 4 weeks at AA. Some schools are shorter depending on previous experience on a type at AA. Out of the 4 weeks, the first 2 are ground school which is done by a instructor who is TWU. The other misc ground classes have TWU intructors also. The last 2 weeks are in the simulator. The first week of basic sim work is done by a TWU simpilot. These guys have pilots licenses, but aren't AA seniority list guys. The last week of sims is done by a AA Check Airmen who is a Captain with a AA pilot seniority number.

In the past, to get around sim capacity issues, the student and sim instructor have traveled to use simulators at other airlines. To do anything else amounts to major labor problem with APA and the TWU and the even greater hassle of training an instructor from somewhere else in AA procedures with FAA approval.

 

[eolesen]

It would be easier and less costly to simply ground a dozen or so MD80's for six months while the training cycles bottleneck runs its course...

When the F100's were parked, there were pilots being paid to sit for six months or so waiting for to go to the schoolhouse, mainly because of the union issues Mach85ER pointed out, but also because it would have taken even longer to get the FAA to agree to using outside vendors to do AA's training.

From DFW, AA's got LAX x 15, ORD and LGA x 12, AUS and DCA x 10, and SAN x 9...

Pull just one each out of those markets and AA could pull 630 flights a month from the schedule, and I don't think anyone but the nonrevs would notice.... So there's room to absorb this as it rolls downhill.

 

[AAStew]

I had a proffer deffered to April at JFK. (Proffer=Transfer) Because of the cancellations they have an overage of F/A's and F/O's at our base.

 

[jimntx]

It would be easier and less costly to simply ground a dozen or so MD80's for six months while the training cycles bottleneck runs its course...

This doesn't make any sense to me. The shortage is not at the bottom of the food chain (S80s), it's at the top (777s). It is not a question of finding pilots willing to upgrade. It's getting them upgraded. I know several furloughed pilots who are itching to get back, and were hoping that this might speed up their recall by a few months.

According to what I was told, the "bottleneck" is not in a shortage of bodies, it's in a shortage of training seats to put them in. How does grounding S80s solve that problem?

 

[eolesen]

This doesn't make any sense to me. The shortage is not at the bottom of the food chain (S80s), it's at the top (777s). It is not a question of finding pilots willing to upgrade. It's getting them upgraded. I know several furloughed pilots who are itching to get back, and were hoping that this might speed up their recall by a few months.

According to what I was told, the "bottleneck" is not in a shortage of bodies, it's in a shortage of training seats to put them in. How does grounding S80s solve that problem?

Classroom capacity, instructors, and sim time are more or less independent by fleet type, but classroom space, CBT terminals, and sim technicians are a shared resource. If sims have to run 24/7 just to keep up with the added upgrade activity, something has to give, and that's probably going to be MD80 training. Taking the short-term hit there is a far better option than going thru the time, trouble, and expense of trying to buy additional training capacity elsewhere.