UAL97

I thought it was 120 days max for a furlough notice, not warn? Regardless, in less than a two week span it went from 2250 to, "whoops, we meant at least 3900." They could have easily stated 3900 in the first CCS memo posted by flight ops.

Andy

I'm old and forgetful. I might have to look this one up.

... I guess I'll find out the details if/when I get furloughed for a third time.

UAL97

Have to remember they are also retiring something like 3 entire fleets? We've yet to announce any fleet retirements at UAL.
(In reference to the DAL and AAL furlough numbers)

Hedley

The 90-120 days is per contract for actual furlough, not the warn. 3900 furloughs is right in line with their long-standing 30% reduction number. When bookings and revenue are as low as they are, “only” furloughing 3900 leaves a bunch of pad for the flexibility that they want when the recovery actually starts. Im afraid that the 2250 will be cut as fast as they can, and the rest to follow training capacity at TK. That is of course until they realize that they should have started recalling 6 months prior and scramble to reverse the process.

Andy

Yep, I was wrong. No maximum time on WARN notices. If they wanted to, they could send out WARN notices to the entire company tomorrow. Just a minimum of 60 days.
Timeframe from the contract for furlough notice is 30-120 days.

My bad.

theAiken

I don't think any of the majors are getting out of this without AT LEAST furloughing ~2000 +/- 500.
Given that the recovery has all but stalled it wouldn't surprise me if this is just the start and we see another 2k in the next 6month. The cares act 2.0 is a pipe dream as it doesn't bring the people back.

UAL97

We shall know soon. SK has always wanted to be aggressive since he's been here. How competitive can we be on the recovery if we have 3900 pilots on the street vs only 1600/1900 at our main competitors?

Furloughing 3900 is essentially equal to 5000 when you figure in 1100 mandatory retirements over the next couple of years. Do you think we can recover in any sort of efficient fashion by cutting that deeply? It will be a very cumbersome process to undo all the displacements and retrain the furloughed pilots, even with the shorter requal training footprints that are currently approved.

I think this is the reason why ALPA and the company are in mitigation talks. TK is already jammed up with the very few displacements they've already begun to train. They've realized that furloughing such a massive amount is just not practical or cost efficient to be positioned properly for a recovery, which (let's be honest) no one has a clue of when it may happen.

The only way I can see 3900 as a feasible furlough number is if there are merger plans on the horizon.

Andy

Let's just say that it's a very fluid situation. Wacker drive gets to see future bookings and they build their projections based on what they're expecting. I suspect some of the more optimistic numbers assumed that international travel restrictions would be lifted soon/by now.

The models are probably not giving them a good picture of what to expect and changing one or two variables probably results in radically different demand forecasts.

UAL97

Good info. Thanks for confirming. I honestly can't keep all of these time frame limits straight either.

Hedley

From what I understand, the number of new instructors that need to be trained to get us to the 3900 number would take some time and significantly slow the process. Also, there is nothing that prevents our competitors from having a second round of furloughs. After a vaccine is found, it will take some time to distribute it, show that it works, and build the public’s confidence. Hopefully that can happen before we get too deep into the next wave, but I have no doubt that they will cut to where they want to be. Like you say, Kirby is aggressive and I’m glad he’s there instead of another Tilton or Smisek. My guess is that he doesn’t want to cut deeper than the competition, but if they go deeper, I expect him to do the same.