American Airlines to hire 1500 pilots
 

American Airlines to hire 1,500 new pilots | Labor content from ATWOnline

American Airlines to hire 1,500 new pilots

Aaron Karp Sep 30, 2013

American Airlines plans to hire about 1,500 new pilots over the next five years, the Dallas/Fort Worth-based carrier said Monday.

In a letter to American employees included in a US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing, chairman, president and CEO Tom Horton said the 1,500 new pilots will be in addition to the airline’s offer to recall “all of our furloughed pilots.”

American said in a statement that it “currently anticipates the need to initially hire approximately 45 to 50 pilots per month through at least summer 2014, including pilots from [regional affiliate] American Eagle Airlines and the appropriate balance from external sources.”

Horton noted that American generated $2.34 billion in revenue in August, up 7% year-over-year and the most revenue ever generated by the company in the month of August. The carrier’s strong financial performance, the large number of Airbus and Boeing narrowbody aircraft it has on order and new FAA pilot rest and duty time rules set to start next year all contributed to the decision to recruit and hire 1,500 new pilots. The job posting for the new pilots will officially become public Tuesday.

American, which has been operating under Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection since November 2011, aims emerge from Chapter 11 and merge with US Airways as soon as it either prevails in an antitrust trial versus the US Department of Justice (DOJ) or it and US Airways reach a settlement with DOJ.

“We are making good progress on the merger front, as we continue to prepare a strong case for the trial in November and remain open to discussions with the Justice Department regarding a settlement on appropriate terms,” Horton told American workers.

I've seen numbers that there are ~17,000 RJ pilots in the US. So that's less than 2% a year of them moving up. Add in corporate pilots and pilots returning from overseas contracts and it'll be closer to one percent.

Just a preemptive strike to the impending pilot shortage responses.

Post on apc said that by end of this year or early next year every major U.S. airline will be hiring.

Thank you.

You know they're coming anyway? The responses, I mean.

Yes, the dire "pilot shortage" posts come from the overly zealous (Zeal, def., a common affliction of the young and inexperienced, see A. Bierce) pilots who believe the major airlines will come knocking at their doors, offering nubile, ompliant girls, chocolates, liquor and offers of captaincies in the next 18 months if only they would work for (AA, DL, UA, SW, AS) TODAY. Such has never, and will never, happen, but hope dies slowly in the young Airman's breast.

GF

Wheee! The pilot shortage must be nearly here**! Which airline shall I choose from amongst the plethora of offers about to flood my mailbox & answering machine? I'm not exactly young & inexperienced but I'm not particularly fond of chocolate so I'll work *without* it. That should undercut all those others and put me at the head of the queue.



**Any day now. Or perhaps next week. Next month at the latest. Or next year, almost certainly. Possibly this decade. But you have to train now to catch the bubble.

Uhh, I couldn't help but notice that you didn't volunteer to work without the nubile, "ompliant" girls ....

One must uphold the bar!!


Or is that hold up the bar?

Shortage of pilots, maybe?

Shortage of experienced pilots. Absolutely. The airliner that I fly is VERY short of pilots worldwide. Several airlines have parked aircraft as they simply cannot find enough typed and experienced captains to crew them.

There, I fixed it for you.

You know when FED-EX goes to hire pilots they are absolutely swamped with applications, many more with extensive experience than they can hire.

I'm not sure what airlines and type you're referring to, but I would suggest that if they started offering terms that were equal to Fed-EX's, they would find that their pilot shortage had quite suddenly disappeared.

As far as looking for typed captains, unless you're talking about some very unusual airplane which is like no other on the planet, a type is no big deal. you offer terms which will attract qualified pilots with substantial command experience in relevant similar types, and you type them when they do their initial new hire training, which you have to give to new hires anyway, and a type ride is not much different than a PIC PC.

Additionally, just the fact that they're looking to hire typed captains directly is significant. Except in the case of start-ups, or sudden huge fleet expansions, trying to hire street captains is generally a sign that the airline has been hiring inexperienced pilots into the right seat for low wages, and suddenly finds themselves without pilots experienced enough to upgrade.

Again, the FED-EXes of the world don't have this problem. The terms they offer attract plenty of applicants with substantial large jet command time, for *FO* positions. So, when they need to upgrade a captain, they already have candidates with plenty of relevant command experience within the ranks.

A squared

Would you agree that there will always be a disparity in income levels across various airlines and within various different markets?

Increasing salary levels at an airline may solve that particular airlines crewing problem but such a measure will not increase the number of pilots within the industry in the short to medium term. It simply moves the shortage from one airline to another.

“Again, the FED-EXes of the world don't have this problem. The terms they offer attract plenty of applicants with substantial large jet command time, for *FO* positions”

Yep, they do. And that experience comes from another airline, thus moving the crewing problem from Fedex to the airline they employ from.

I agree, any hiring at a major is good news. Even if I don't get hired, other will (hopefully), and I'll get to move up at my airline.

Which is nice.

As far as "different Markets" this thread is about the US market, or at least that was what my comments were about. Yes, I agree 100% that there is a disparity in income levels, in fact that is central to my point. The ones at the lower end of that disparity range are the ones complaining about the shortage of pilots, while ignoring the inevitable truth that if they moved toward the other end of the range of disparity, it would turn out the "shortage" was not a general shortage, but a shortage of pilots willing to accept their low terms.

So......if the bottom feeders started paying fedex level wages, how would fedex get pilots?