Originally Posted by
Itsajob
Furloughs take a long time to recover from and they’re really expensive. Things are moving way too fast to accurately plan for this week, much less 2 years out. My guess is that all airlines, legacy and regional, decide that it’s cheaper to keep a bunch of people sitting around doing nothing until they figure it out. When they come up with a vaccine things will rebound to what ever the new normal is. At that point they can staff appropriately.
I suspect some airlines may be hoping to permanently pick up the domestic slack from the big three... if they're well financed and can afford to be ready for the upturn, they might be able to do that if the big three are dragged down by their international overhead (which will probably be idle longer).