AA has finally started to recall furloughed pilots and that appears to be the plan for the foreseeable future. Unfortunately, there are nearly 600 of them. Many of those guys will not come back. So far we are talking 20-30 a month recalled. Average age at AA is 52 or so. Some guys are certainly staying past 60, many are not. Some are just waiting for the bankruptcy to play out and make sure they don't miss something on the distributions coming from frozen pensions and equity stake in the new company. Once they are past that you will probably see some more retirements. In spite of the bankruptcy and lower than industry pay rates for some years, the retirement program at AA was generally better than other airlines. Most guys can afford to retire closer to 60 than not. WRT a US Airways merger, that may play out for wannabes as well. The old USAIR (east guys) pilots are older as a group than AA. They have fought the seniority integration with the former AmericaWest guys since the merger and continue to operate as two separate groups with different pay and work rules, even tho the same union. So even tho the East guys get paid less, they have kept their seniority in their own little world. No Captains were displaced in the merger and their bid position hasn't changed. BUT, if there is merger AA's union APA will be the surviving union and AA pilots the majority by a long shot. Seniority integration is now governed by legislation that will ensure an integration looking more like AA/TWA and the arbitrated AWA/USAir than strict date of hire that US Airways went to the mat over. That will mean that lots of East guys will have forced on them what they have been fighting for years. The integration will undoubtedly mean some loss of left seats and back sliding to smaller planes. Word on the street is those guys will retire in droves once they feel the affect of a merged seniority list between AA, West (former AWA), and East. Moreover, AA has 600 planes on order. Their entire fleet is around 600 and plenty of them are new planes already. You won't see a one for one exchange. Many of those 600 new aircraft orders will be growth. Confused? Doesn't matter, it is all conjecture.