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10-22-2019, 04:39 PM

#478

whalesurfer

Gets Weekends Off

Joined APC: Feb 2013

Posts: 1,339

Quote:

Originally Posted by MikeC5

How worried are fairly new hires at UPS of the possibility of furlough when the next economic dip/recession hits?
I know the company is strong now, and growing, but are retirements and growth strong enough to keep everyone comfortable? Honestly curious.

I don’t think newhires need to worry about the possibility of a furlough. Just like Boiler said, there are numerous differences between what we see today and what we saw back then.

Having said that, I’d like to mention that we saw many pilots retire early (prior to 60) back then too. In fact, some of us junior guys and gals were amazed at how quickly we were moving up. The economy was good, we were getting more 76s and many captains were leaving at 58, 59, etc.

Then, seemingly overnight, pretty much ALL early retirements came to a screeching halt because the stock market dropped once recession had finally kicked in.
Point being, IF there’s a huge market drop you’ll see the very same trend - people will stick around for as long as they can. You won’t see a single person leave even a day early.

The other issue that truly ‘hurt’ all newhires back then was the age 65 retirement age change.
Passenger airlines didn’t have any flight engineers - we had hundreds. So while passenger airline pilots saw a major stagnation, we, junior pilots, saw massive regression in seniority and 109 of those junior pilots ended up losing their jobs, some of them for 4+ years.
Remember, age 65 rule meant that flight engineers who’re still under 65 could come back to the left seat displacing junior captains in those seat, who’d then displace junior FOs to flight engineers seats, who’d then displace junior flight engineers to ...them being furloughed.

The difference between now and then is that when age retirement changes again, and it will, to let’s say 68 (i.e. Japan scenario) everyone will see stagnation just the way passenger pilots saw back then. However, since we no longer have any flight engineers who can displace junior captains from their seats we’d see a stagnation but not a regression. A HUGE difference from back then.

If the economy gets so bad the company chooses to retire MD11s sooner than everyone anticipates and if they defer deliveries of airplanes already purchased - I’d say all bets are off.
Just don’t see that happening anytime soon....

So to answer your original question, I think new-hires should have very little to worry about. These are good times to be a newbie at any major airline.

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