Originally Posted by
Hueypilot
Most of the other airlines have gone through what we are going through...merger, right-sizing, tanked economy, PBS, etc.
Yes, the movement won't likely shift into high gear for a little while longer, but we've got a lot of attrition coming that stretches well into the next decade.
I remember reading DL and UA guys on here talking about how horrible things will be with right-sizing, PBS etc and yet now they are done with that they are moving along nicely.
Economic downturns are cyclical and should be expected. It's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when and how severe. In any case, I think if you manage your budget on a narrow-body FO pay level, you'll do fine regardless of how events turn out...well, most of the time any way.
There's always the very bad downturns, such as 9/11 and the early 2000s (also a mild recession made things worse)...but I would think that's an extreme and most economic downturns won't be that bad as the industry saw from 2001-2008.
It's a bit of a different industry as well. In the late 90's we had cheap oil as well and it was a race by every company (and many new startups) to add as much capacity as fast as possible.
UAL was buying 777's like they were free. Delta was dumping cheap capacity in a failed attempt to contain SWA out of Florida-NE market. US Air was often on the ropes offering cheap capacity. Continental offered to fly for peanuts (rates)....every airline had hopes of increasing market share. Their plan was right off the proverbial make money off of negative yields through volume. Everyone seemed to think everyone else would go under and make the industry healthy again.
When 9/11 attack took place, all four WB flights that were struck were well under 50% load factors flying coast to coast.
Bottom line after 9/11 (recession had already begun) and airlines used the force majeure event to immediately rightsize the industry. Couple that with a one time immediate retirement age extension by 5 years right as the job market was starting to recover and you really have a lost decade for pilots (and the industry).
Of course no one wants to see, but the industry as a whole at this moment seems in a much better structural position to weather a downturn, probably better than any other time before.