I'd do anything to go back and unsee that video. I fly on AE probably 5-10% of my flights, and as one pilot noted, usually the weather in those small towns isn't good.

Last week I flew ORD-BUF and man was it a rough approach coming in. I actually thought of the Continental flight while we're going in. The pilot was fighting it hard, we kept losing altitude and he'd throttle up. He was using the rudder to steer and we were swaying back and forth. It was scary, even for me who averages 125 segments per year. However, at maybe 50 feet he set that plane up nice and it was a for lack of better words, a perfect landing from then on. However, the three minutes prior seemed like hell.

Anyways, I knew it was always a business end-game, but I was really surprised to hear the wages. About 1.5 years ago, I enjoyed a 3 hour conversation with an AA MD80 Airman. He actually said the eagle guys were just as qualified and the only gripe was that they were doing the work of the mainline pilots for half the price, and that the regional execs are always trying to position themselves for more routes from the mainline. I did ask about quality of pilots, and he generally said they were all good guys, but he just didn't like them since they were taking away his union's jobs. He did cite the seniority advantage of AA pilots, and he did feel AA had the best maintenance crew in the business.

He also comforted me that AA management never punishes pilots for terminating landings, diverting, or canceling flights due to pilot discretion on safety, and sometimes pilots are awarded. He cited the recent AirFrance flight that went down and claimed it was a situation where the pilots knowingly flew into a wicked storm that could've been as high as 60k feet, and that most likely the airline would've criticized pilots for utilizing extra fuel and causing delays by going around such a massive cell. He led me to believe any AA pilot would've flew around the storm cell just on common sense, while the AF pilots likely had to consider repercussions upon arrival if they diverted.

Of course all of that is hearsay, but he was knowledgeable and it was very informative. All that said, I'd like to think that with AMR managing AE, the quality standard is going to be higher than that of Comair, Colgan, etc. I just can't believe how little money they make given everything, wow.