Originally Posted by
Timbo
I believe you are correct, they stopped hiring not long after we signed C2K in May, the contract that got rid of reserve pilots being able to bid move ups, along with many other concessions...
My point is, about every 10 years or so, another Black Swan shows up. We are overdue for the next one.
Feel free to speculate what that swan is going to look like, here, I'll start:
1. Emirates gets more access to our major cites and/or Cabotage gets approved.
EK and their ilk will definately barf many hundreds of thousands of additional seats a day into pretty much every large US city, no matter what. It will be very interesting to watch the response of the much stronger US airlines as well as our fearless legislators. The good news is their growth plans are so dellusional that they will end up choking on their own bubblenomics as soon as the reality that overpopulation isn't a national resource catches up with them. All the stimulus skyscrapers, ghost cities and paper banking centers won't be enough to sustain their world conquering manifest destiny.
BTW, your -X1 formula isn't that far off. 2011's black swan was an economically related onset of (according to some) dramatic overstaffing after just having hired in 07, 08 and 10. So hiring did indeed stop in a year ending with a 1. So hopefully that's at least 7 more years to go.
