O2pilot

If there are a few PIs in a block of 1,000 pilots, they will furlough the pilots and just be short on PIs and work on replacing them.

Chuck D

#notanexpertopinion but I keep coming back to summer 2021 being the reference point that will drive furloughs. I’ve got to assume along the lines of Delta, we might be forecast at 7k or even more over staffed for this fall/winter. But if we turn a corner towards a stronger (say around 80% of peak) next summer, we can’t draw down this fall so much that it’s impossible to ramp back up to that figure.

so my guess is the company would aim this fall to furlough deeper than the summer 2021 forecast but still able target the optimistic pilot count by the time summer rolls around. They can tweak from that if demand remains low. Not sure how long it takes to requal pilots off furlough or even requal instructors but as was said if we lost say 4K in one cut that would eviscerating instructor ranks which would I assume really put a drag on ability to rebuild quickly.

TSRAGR

There are no TK instructors short of about 1700#s if that's what you're asking/saying. But instructors obviously get furloughed like the rest. Can take up to 9+months to get an instructor fully qual'd, but they're ready to teach the basics in two months.

SlickMachine

737 fleet is fat on instructors going into this. We are staffed for the original plan prior to the Max issue which was to hire at maximum capacity. There has been a small amount of attrition from guys taking their bids but overall, overstaffed. If furlough hits the bottom 20-30 instructors, it won't make any difference unfortunately.

TheSoCalGuy

Not being in the School House, was wondering what the demographic's of IP's vs Numbers vs Seniority.....

I didn't differentiate between IP's vs equipment, but just glancing at the CCS---Reports---Staffing, and sorting/filtering "Pos" as TI (Instructors, aka IP's), and "Sort By" as System Seniority......I counted roughly 95 Instructors at the 10K mark going to the bottom/most junior displayed on that list. Taking 95 of the total TK IP's, I would say that's not a "small amount" of the total IP's in the School House assuming the Company decides to furlough 2500-3000 Pilots. I am in NO WAY saying I have any intel (NO ONE HERE DOES), just picking a rough scenario delineated above to see what that would look like, thus 10K seniority number to get some complexion.

Itsajob

Many analysts are now saying that the recovery will begin in the 4th quarter of this year and many airlines will see demand down 50-60% at year end, and still down 20-30% for next year. If this displacement is setting up for a 30% reduction in staffing, how many instructors do they really need when there aren’t many pilots needed on the line? If we don’t need very many pilots, they have plenty of time to train crews and replacement instructors. October is still 4 months away, and summer 2021 flying is a long way off. They can still announce a big furlough and then get busy training people. They will be able to notify people of furlough in only 11 days. I don’t know if they will come out of the gate with the max 120 day notices, or wait for the 90 day notice depending on how deep they decide to go, but the waiting game won’t last much longer.

Zoomie

Some factors that haven’t been talked about here about these displacements:

1) Have you looked at the displacement list? A rough skim on my part guesstimates over 70% of those displaced chose a different fleet. I have no idea how many of those will require the full course(Those that have been off that airplane for more than 60 mos), but I’m guessing a high percentage.

2) Training won’t be beefing up for Jun on displacements. Training has already posted The Jun schedule and they can’t add training to our schedule after it closes. There are some creative things they can do with instructors on reserve, but it would be a disaster for training, especially qual training.

3) July- Unless the company offers and instructors choose to trade vacation months in July, this is the least staffing month TK has. My guess is 30% have at least 1 week of vacay. Instructors might be begging for overtime in last 6 months, but that taste might dry up if these same instructors get a furlough letter on Jul 1. So while qual courses will happen, it would be no where near capable of 55/month is July or even August. We won’t be able to do those numbers till Sept.

4) I think someone said a lot of FO/FO pairings, but there’s gonna be a lot of CA “downgrades” from 75/767 and Airbus-737, 787/777-Airbus, etc. It will take forever to train this, and if they do cut 2500, they will lose 50% of the 737 instructors. Conversely, on the Airbus fleet, that would cut like 2% or so...very senior instructors.

5) Have you noticed how little the number of flights to DEN there are from other hubs? Getting people to/from training is much harder now too, which means cnx’ed sims and lost sessions due to misconnects. Good thing we pushed all training to DEN, instead of spreading it around the system. 🙃

This disaster of a displacement is just that, a disaster. I don’t think they have intentions of beefing this up. I think these are doing it just to try and “cut costs”, but it’s kinda like the APU nazi’s, it’s not gonna Dave much since it’s gonna trigger so much training and they can’t furlough all those instructors/etc. I would not want to manage this train wreck. You though scheduling was bad when you had happy new hires that showed up every day. Combine that with COVID, ****ed off double, now potentially triple furloughees, hotel space and cleaning, and you have a recipe for an exploding schedule.

I think the quick trigger on the displacement bid was an attempt for the company to get as many volunteer furloughed off to other jobs. We don’t have nearly as many military hires since the merger as Southwest or Delta(our managements fault). Those military we did hire in past 7 yrs have been mostly old hires (retirees). This will hurt badly when furlough numbers happen, because not as many will go back to military, and not as many have options of “Trough-ing” in the reserves to reduce their line value and give more flying to other active line holders.

We will probably be hurt more than other companies in this. Our training costs more than others, which is good for is to dissuade this type of action. We have more international than anyone else(Pan-Am/TWA anyone?). We need to put those wide bodies on domestic hubs to and from competitors hubs and make flight cheap as crap to incentivize travel. People are gonna book if they see cheap fares, not $1000 “COVID friendly” courtesy service. If we don’t start flooding with cheap fares, we are gonna have a really hard time.

UASCOMPILOT

Southwest is ramping up to go after the juggler of all 3 legacy! Biggest target AA my guess! You guys are thinking like pilots as usual. There's gonna be a war for domestic, Caribbean and S/Central America. As many NB's as we have on order/sitting we would be fools not to utilize the staffing we have to shore up those markets. WE WERE NEVER GONNA BE ABLE TO STAFF THE MAX ORDERS...well we can now!

Not to mention the A/C we got from Southwest.

UAL97

Problem is we continue to lag behind the competitors in the number of flights we currently offer and the majority of our pilots will be non qualified or in training due to the displacement when a significant rebound occurs. Doesn't appear SK is really too serious about being a legit player on the rebound. Then again, most of this is could be doom and gloom theatrics in hopes of gaining concessions. Which will it be?