nopac6

Not sure if you’re being sarcastic but I don’t see liquidation for United. Chapter 11? Quite possible. Liquidation though? I doubt it. United was making money hand over first before all this. If there’s money to be made in flying people around the world, delta and united are your best bets in the US. The government knows this and JP Morgan Chase knows this.

The resurgences in Japan and Singapore are very troubling. The only hope we have of our traffic rebounding quickly enough for us to stay out of chapter 11 is if we get on the other side of this, start opening up the economy and DONT see a resurgence. If we’re still having sporadic lock downs and social distancing 10 to 12 months from now, we might be screwed. Who knows? I hope I’m wrong.

captsurf

Is it at all possible for them to post a displacement bid this summer just to see how the senior folk will bid? Do a “cost analysis” of a planned furlough by running a bid and seeing what/how many training cycles will be required. If it’s cost effective, pull the trigger. If not, cancel the displacement bid and come up with plan B,C,D, and E.

(My percentages and timelines below are completely made-up for the sake of this example)

Say their models and future bookings show a 60% return in demand for October. Run a displacement bid with 30% less capacity (leaving a 10% surplus to staff additional growth in demand for the following months in Q42020/Q12021). Now let’s say the cost of that displacement bid has a breakeven point of 12 months, meaning we’d have to see demand reach 100% by October 2021 to save money by NOT furloughing and activating the bid. Could the airline cancel the bid if they see the cost of displacements outweighing the pilot salaries based on demand rate of return? Or the contrary (furlough and activate the bid). Or even a mix of both, cancelling individual displacements from the top down in the bid to match changes in their forecasts

JoePatroni

How many displacement bids does it take for 5,000 displacements? Do you think guys will just bid into the positions the company wants them to on every displacement bid? How much money do you save with thousands of guys racking up extra training cycles? There’s a reason they don’t do it all at once and it’s because the contract makes it prohibitively expensive on purpose.

MasterOfPuppets

thanks NOPAC you beetle juiced this tool into our thread

MasterOfPuppets

the problem with this is pilots don’t bid logically. You could put out 3 bids and the pilots would bid 3 different ways. Large displacements become a game for those who will be staying on property. Some try to maximize pay for as long as they can, some try to see who long they can sit at home not getting trained.

also one bid will not capture the secondary and tertiary displacements. We could have 100 pilots bid 737 CA in GUM and they wouldn’t be able to right size GUM until a second bid.

iahflyr

This is my prediction. The 757/767 fleet gets parked. A displacement bid occurs soon. Several WB FO’s and NB CA’s get displaced to NB FO. Training occurs before Oct 1. Then on October 1, a large number of furloughs happen (greater than 2,000), with a couple hundred a month on top of that until UA reaches their number.

How many pilots are above the date where UAX has to convert their 76 seaters to 70 seats? I can see that number being a likely number for the initial furloughs. If it gets worse, they’ll blow through that number. If it doesn’t appear as bad, they may hold there

nopac6

Joe,

I said if traffic doesn’t increase from what we’re at now, they could furlough 5000 on October 1st. Here’s what I mean:

For May and June they’ve only got 10% of our previous schedule planned. That should take about 10% of our fleet right? About 75 airplanes is all they’ll need to fly the may and June schedule. Let’s say 50 narrow bodies and 25 wide bodies. 50 narrow bodies only requires about 350 f/o’s. If we aren’t flying any more than 10% on October 1st and they furlough everybody from 8000 down, they’ll still have 603 narrow body f/o’s on the property. No need for ANY displacements at all. That’s my point. Check the staffing reports if you don’t believe me. (756, bus and 737 f/o’s that are senior to 8000).

Let’s say between now and October, they decide to start flying 20% of the previous schedule. Now they need approx 700 narrow body f/o’s. They’d be a bit short so they could displace and train 100 during the next few months and have enough.

I’m not predicting this is what’s going to happen. I sure as hell hope we’re flying more than 10% of our previous schedule by then but no one knows. All I’m saying is that if traffic doesn’t increase from where we’re at now, then this furlough will go a LOT deeper than many on here think it will and could happen very quickly. The company CAN and will do this and still be in full compliance with all provisions of the contract.

OVC010CB

Hopefully there will be an effective treatment program or perhaps a vaccine eventually, but as of now the only effective way to stop the pandemic is herd immunity through infection. It's possible parts of Italy, Spain, the UK and the NYC Metro area are already close, time will tell.

Social distancing and lockdowns are very catastrophic to the economy and at best they are delaying the inevitable. I would expect the case rate of COVID-19 to rise as more testing is accomplished and lockdowns are eased. It won't directly impact most of us (pilots are healthier than the average population), with those that are elderly and/or obese much more likely to have a severe reaction.

Politicians keep looking for a silver bullet, but they may not ever find it.

JoePatroni

As soon as you displace one wide body pilot, the displacement/training waterfall starts....especially fairly junior captains. I agree with you on the narrow body side.

Jaded N Cynical

Domino???? Is that who you deliver pizzas for to supplement your Skywest salary? I don't think your allowed to smoke the cannabis until you are furloughed.