I've heard, from a bitter double furloughee amongst others, that in 2001 he knew something was coming because he was flying half empty transcons and was getting nervous since he was a tail end Charlie new hire at United. Said United was the place to go in the late 90s/early 2000, sort of like Delta in 2014-2016 I guess as DAL expanded their SL by about 2k pilots during that time frame.