Two regional airlines owned by American Airlines are giving their pilots substantial pay raises over the next two years amid struggles to hold on to pilots.
An American Airlines Boeing 777 plane takes off from Paris Charles de Gaulle airport in Roissy-en-France near Paris, France, December 2, 2021.Piedmont has been losing about 25 pilots a month to American Airlines' mainline and has failed to reach its goal of hiring about 40 pilots each month. The airline usually flies between smaller cities but has not been able to use 10 of its roughly 60 planes, according to CNBC.
Envoy, meanwhile, has about 2,000 pilots but has lost about 80 pilots a year to other airlines while only hiring about 60. A JetBlue airliner lands past a Spirit Airlines jet on taxi way at Fort Lauderdale Hollywood International Airport on Monday, April 25, 2022. This comes as some of the largest pilot unions, which represent more than 35,000 pilots at American, Southwest, Delta and JetBlue, are negotiating with their employers.
American, which has about 14,000 pilots, recently offered a 4% pay raise at the time of signing that would be followed by a 3% increase in the next year.