June 2026 Briefing
Welcome Back to PilotSeniority Intelligence
Hello all, and welcome to June’s issue of Intelligence. The summer schedule is in full swing and I’m sure you’re busy out there. There’s a lot going on around the operation, so I’ll jump right in. Here’s my monthly disclaimer: everything you read here is pulled directly from published PDF bidpacks, 3XP lists, and the monthly bid awards.
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The List: 16,772 Pilots
AA’s pilot group this month stands at 16,772 pilots, split 6,774 Captains to 8,339 First Officers (about 45/55). Year-to-date, the list is up 512 pilots (+3.2%) from where it started January, steady growth that’s held all year.
This past month was a quiet one for the headcount: with retirements continuing and no new-hire class since last month’s issue, our overall number slipped a bit. Year-to-date hiring is still strong, though: 856 pilots have joined since January, and more classes are rumored for the second half of the year.
The base-by-base growth story stays familiar. LGA and PHL remain neck and neck at the top (LGA +9.3% year-to-date, PHL +8.8%), just as they’ve traded the lead all year. DCA follows at +5.4%, then a tight pack of DFW, CLT, and ORD around +4.5%. DFW added the most pilots in raw terms (+158 since January). On the other end, PHX has contracted the most (−4.9% YTD) and BOS is down 3.2%, while MIA has landed essentially flat. As the September vacancy awards continue to take hold, the reshuffling will continue through the upgrade cycle and as junior pilots flow into their preferred bases.
Departures: 300 Retirements YTD, 488 to Go
The retirement wave keeps rolling right on schedule. 300 pilots have reached their mandatory retirement date so far in 2026 (up from 252 when I last wrote), with 488 more scheduled between now and December 31, keeping the full-year 2026 total pegged at roughly 788 pilots, the same number I’ve been tracking all year.
That latest group kept right on schedule: age-65 departures, no early-outs, and we didn’t lose any juniors off the list to other carriers as far as I can tell. That’s been the steady pattern all year: fly off into the sunset on the day you turn 65.
They leaned widebody again: 16 came off the 777 and 787 (10 from the 787, 6 from the 777). DFW saw the most retirements (14), then MIA (8) and ORD (6). A good month for movement: it’s been said that every widebody retirement creates four opportunities downstream.
July Awards: 15,035 Pilots, a New Sequence High
July PBS awards are in. 15,035 pilots were awarded across the 60 bid statuses, covering 48,510 sequences, a new monthly high for sequences in 2026, past June’s 47,882 and May’s 47,669. Pilots awarded came in at 15,035, essentially even with June’s 15,059. More sequences spread across about the same number of pilots means a little more flying per awarded line.
Compared to July 2025, the growth is solid on both measures: +602 pilots awarded (+4.2% YoY) and +1,385 sequences (+2.9% YoY).
The standout at the bid-status level is LAX widebody, which is in for a big month. The number of pilots holding LAX 787 Captain lines climbed from 34 to 45, LAX 777 Captain from 43 to 49, and LAX 777 FO from 142 to 153. In July, LAX picks up regular widebody transcon flying it didn’t have in June: Miami on the 777 and Philadelphia on the 787. It’s the widebody companion to the XLR’s premium-transcon buildup, with AA concentrating more high-end domestic flying at LAX. DFW widebody grew too, with 787 Captain lines up 7% and 787 sequences up 12%.
July Bidpack: More Flying Everywhere, and the Schedule Padding Is Real
The July schedule is bigger than last July on both sides of the operation: narrowbody operating days are up 5.3% YoY (58,477 op-days, block hours +5.1%), and widebody op-days are up 2.4% YoY with WB block hours up 2.8%. Month-over-month, July is June plus about one percent.
Here’s the part I find genuinely interesting. The company has said publicly that it’s been adding schedule padding (lengthening scheduled block times) to protect on-time arrivals. The bidpack tells us where that’s going: of the 156 widebody city pairs flown in both July 2025 and July 2026, 96 of them, covering 63% of this July’s widebody flying, carry a longer scheduled block than the same leg a year ago. Only 30 pairs got shorter. The average change across all of it is +4.7 minutes per leg, and since this is July against July, seasonal winds aren’t the explanation.
A few of the bigger ones, same airplane route and month, just more scheduled time:
And it isn’t just long-haul: MIA–PHL picked up 12 minutes. The pattern worth noticing: the biggest additions are concentrated on legs arriving back into the US, while several of the matching outbound legs actually got a few minutes shorter (DFW–HND −14, DFW–GRU −15, PHL–ZRH −15). That’s consistent with protecting the arrival banks where misconnects hurt most.
Put together, the longer blocks on existing routes account for roughly +446 hours of the widebody YoY block-hour growth; the rest is route mix: new routes that didn’t exist last July add about 3,560 hours, dropped routes take away about 2,010, and frequency changes on continuing routes trim about 500.
And it isn’t just the widebody fleet. The same padding runs across the narrowbody system, even more broadly: of the 1,136 domestic city pairs flown on the 320 and 737 in both Julys, 69% carry a longer scheduled block than a year ago, about +3.2 minutes per leg across nearly 98,000 flights. Smaller per-leg adds than the widebodies, but spread over the bulk of the operation. And it points the same way: the heaviest padding sits on legs into the big connecting hubs, into ORD (from DFW, LAX, LGA, PHX, CLT) and into DFW (from SFO, MIA, MCO, PHL), exactly where a late inbound would blow up a connection.
Across the Atlantic on the widebody side, London is down 12% YoY as a crew overnight (631 op-days vs 721 last July) while southern and central Europe pick up the slack: Madrid +27 op-days YoY, Milan +30, Zurich doubled (30 to 60), Athens up 24% at 149, and Buenos Aires up 34 to 124. Rome and Paris hold even. Tokyo Haneda runs level at 120.
On the narrowbody layover front, two cities return for July after dropping out in June, and they’re both ones I called out as losses last month: Panama City Beach (ECP) is back with 35 op-days, and Puerto Vallarta (PVR) returns with 9. Enjoy those beach stays!
Going the other way, three destinations drop off for July: Asheville (AVL), St. Maarten (SXM), and Monterrey, Mexico (MTY). Versus last July, we gain a few overnight cities we didn’t have at all in the July 2025 bidpack: St. Croix (59 op-days), Chattanooga (51), Providenciales (29), and Kalispell (9), the Glacier National Park gateway, which joined the map in June and picks up a few more overnights in July.
XLR Update: Edinburgh Fully Unblocked, and the Other Thing the XLR Is Doing
June was the month Edinburgh became biddable. In July, the company takes the training wheels all the way off: every EDI trip in the July bidpack is open, with zero op-days blocked for OE, after 15 of 30 were still blocked in June. The EDI operation itself is unchanged: 30 op-days at the CA-FO position and 30 at the FB relief seat, same 1-0-1 evening-JFK-departure shape.
But Edinburgh is only a quarter of what the XLR is flying. I’ve covered this airplane as the over-the-pond story since March, and that’s still the interesting part. But as of today, most of the XLR’s time is on premium transcon. The JFK–LAX run that AA used to break the airplane in is the backbone (the single biggest block of XLR flying in July), and the July bidpack adds a second transcon: LAX–BOS, brand new this month at 30 legs, with the airplane continuing from Boston to DFW (20 legs) and MIA (10). That’s why Boston shows up out of nowhere as the top XLR overnight, at 46 op-days, ahead of JFK at 38 and LAX at 33.
It also means the XLR isn’t really an LGA airplane anymore. Of July’s 131 XLR op-days at the CA-FO position (115 in June), LAX 320 pilots carry 68, more than LGA’s DOM and INT flying combined. Airbus pilots: study up on those differences CBTs, because the XLR is coming to a city near you!
Split Duty Doubles Again: 6 Base/Fleets, 230 Op-Days
Good news or bad news, depending on how you look at it: the Split Duty program keeps doubling. May launched with 62 op-days, June ran 117, and July is at 230 op-days across 44 sequences, up 97% month-over-month. The footprint goes from four base/fleets to six, and for the first time it crosses west: PHX 320 and PHX 737 both pick up Split Duty trips in July, and CLT 737 joins too. MIA 737, which ran four of these in June, drops out entirely.
The outstation churn continues, and the list keeps getting longer: 23 cities across the six base/fleets, up from 9 in June. DFW 737 went from a single outstation (Memphis) to six. DFW 320 dropped Huntsville, which carried almost all of its June flying, and spread across Austin, Birmingham, Denver, McAllen, Tulsa, and Northwest Arkansas. The company is clearly still experimenting with which markets these trips fit, but the direction isn’t ambiguous: more bases, more cities, more op-days, three months running. Notably, the company still has plenty of headroom to expand these. The contractual limit is 3% of narrowbody pairings systemwide; right now Split Duty is running at just 0.3% of pairings (or 1.09% of operating days), so there’s a lot of room left to grow.
Luckily, they’re proving relatively popular. In DFW 320, the split-duty trips were gone by the top 12% of the Captain bid status; in PHX 320, by the top 10%; in CLT 320, by the top 19% of the FO list. You had to be senior to land one. Here’s how the award picture has moved since the program launched:
In July, 96% of split-duty trips went to the senior half of their bid status, and two-thirds of awardees built full-month split-duty lines. What launched as broadly available flying is increasingly going to senior bidders who don’t mind these types of trips.
That’s It for June
Lots going on this month. More expansion, longer block times, more retirements, and summer trucks along.
Stay cool out there and fly safe!
Erik
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