Originally Posted by
Itsajob
It will be interesting to see how some of our furlough protections are applied. If we furlough deep enough (1/23/2016), some expensive provisions kick in. The 76 seat jets have to be reconfigured to 70 seats, and the companies operating those jets have to hire our furloughed pilots at 2nd year pay. It will be hard for them to hire our pilots when they are potentially looking at furloughs too.
I wouldn’t say reconfiguring the 76 seaters to 70 seaters is going to be that expensive. In fact, I would imagine it’s a near zero cost. At republic we took 80 seat 175’s and made them 76 seaters over the coarse of a few weeks to be compliant on scope with Delta after merging Shuttle and Republic. The planes were flown with the last row removed and an empty space there until the planes were ready to go through a cabin refit to change them from USAirways interiors to AA.
The insides are already United, it’s literally going to be a matter of removing 6 seats and respacing the remaining seats. The tracks run the entire length of the cabin. Pop a few bolts and the seats will slide. We are talking maybe a day or two with in house MX to reconfigure a single plane. Sure it will be a nuisance, but I doubt it will be of great expense. If anything, that expense will be realized as lower profits for United with the reduction of 6 seats.