American Airlines, the company that owns PSA as a regional carrier, extended the offer to pilots with FedEx and UPS — two cargo carriers who have been friendly with American.
While that offer has “technically” expired, Dion Flannery, PSA’s president, said the airline is still happy to have conversations with qualified candidates about the bonus.
And the airline is still extending rather hefty incentives.
“We now have the largest bonus out there in the regional airline industry, a $200,000 bonus,” he told the Dayton Daily News.
PSA’s appeal to pilots qualified to fly the CRJ Bombardier aircraft as captains: “Here’s $200,000 that you’ll get within your first year.”
What follows is a transcript of a recent interview with Flannery, edited for length and clarity.
Dayton Daily News: What was the overall response to your $250,000 signing bonus offer?
Dion Flannery: “I can tell you we had over 25,000 views and hits to those pages (website pages detailing the PSA offer) in the weeks that followed that offer.
“But what we found is a lot of folks were saying, ‘Hey, this is intriguing to me, but I’m not ready to do it yet. I just don’t know what the future is going to be like.’
“We did get a handful of pilots who said, ‘Yep, this is right for me. I’m coming over.’ We’ve actually started training many of them already.
“We put an expiration date on it (the offer) in early December, simply just for managing our resources and creating a call to action for pilots who might be interested. That offer is technically closed. But if FedEx or UPS want to call us back and say, ‘We want to do something. We want to extend this,’ we’ll be here to take that call.
“But what we did get out of it, applications from other pilots outside those two global cargo carriers (FedEx and UPS) started happening. Our application volume of qualified captain candidates went up significantly.”
DDN: When you say a “handful” of FedEx and UPS pilots responded, can you quantify that? And can you talk about your application volume in general?
Flannery: “We’re not giving out specifics, quite frankly, for two reasons. One, as you’re well aware, it’s a pretty competitive marketplace. … Some of it is proprietary and defensive by nature.
“The other piece of this is, we’re not sure any of these are really done. I don’t want to do any speaking for any organization outside of PSA, but I would tell you, Tom, that we entered these dialogues and we put forth the effort in terms of trying to determine productive ways for us to be successful in recruitment. And I just don’t think those conversations are done yet.
“We’re really pleased that we No. 1, put together something. And No. 2, to have our name out there with American and FedEx and UPS.”
DDN: Why offer the bonus in the first place?
Flannery: “We have airplanes on the ground. We are going to do everything, including innovating, to make certain that we get qualified pilots to get those airplanes back flying again. And once we do that, then the airline sort of starts to gain its own momentum. We need to have enough flying and enough hours out there on a daily basis so that our first officers are accruing that vital flight time so that they can become qualified to be captains with PSA.
“I would remind you that you have to have a thousand hours of 121 pilot time to become eligible to upgrade to a captain.”
(”121″ refers to a Federal Aviation Administration specification governing major airlines, such as PSA’s owner American Airlines, Delta Air Airlines, Southwest and regional air carriers like PSA, as well as cargo operators.)
DDN: If a UPS or FedEx pilot is still interested in the $250,000 bonus, would you have a conversation at this point?
Flannery: “100%. Absolutely. We’re open for anybody we’ve extended an offer to, if they couldn’t find the means to make a definitive decision during the enrollment period, if they’re still interested, we will answer the phone and have that conversation.”
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