American Airlines to Close Phoenix Training Facility

[AmericanFlyer]

American Airlines to close Phoenix pilot-training facility (http://www.azcentral.com/story/money/business/2016/08/04/american-airlines-close-phoenix-pilot-training-facility/88226352/)

[bafanguy]

I'm a little surprised at that. AA has a LOT of training to be done if they're going to replace their large attrition...the training pipeline has defined capacity limits. Doing anything to interfere with that, even temporarily, will have a negative impact. Would it not ?

[striker26]

They are trying to make their training more efficient. Closing Phoenix means they will use those resources/budget towards the other training centers. Why more US airlines don't centralize their training is beyond me. Either way, unless the pilot training lives around DFW training center for example, the rest will have to travel anyway. I'd make one mega training center for all fleets and pilot types and have the pilots travel to it. Would make the HR/Admin, training way more efficient.

[bafanguy]

Striker26,


Yes, consolidating training facilities is understandable. I was just commenting that this point in history is not the best time to even temporarily decrease sim capacity. AA's training center, like UAL and DL, has been running in high blower for the last year or two and that will only need to increase over the next 10+ years if they intend to replace attrition one for one (admittedly an "if").

There was a time when one carrier could buy sim time from another carrier to handle a temporary training surge; this doesn't appear to be one of those times, at least here in the USA. They'll all muddle through somehow, I'm sure. The wheels will continue to turn !! ;-))