Just to clarify, I said, "It wouldn’t completely surprise me if we end up furloughing 60-70%". I don't think that's the likely case. I then laid out what I think might be a realistic number of about 3,000, or roughly 30% of our list. And, in any case, I don't see them starting off furloughing 60-70%.

And btw, we are not overstaffed due to the MAX. That is simply not the fact. Our manning levels began to increase shortly after ratification of the 2016 contract, well before the MAX arrived on property and well before the MAX was grounded. The MAX crisis simply exacerbated the overmanning that was already well under way.

As many here have pointed out this situation is unprecedented and highly dynamic. Even the experts are confounded. They are all over the map with their projections. There are guys like the prominent Oppenheimer analyst who just today stated he thinks the worst is over and that the tech and health care sectors will fuel the recovery. On the flip side, there are other well-known economists and experts like Nouriel Roubini, Scott Minerd, Peter Schiff, and Larry Summers who think that, at best, we are going to see a deep recession, surpassing that of 2008-2009.

Oil is at a historic low reflecting the gigantic demand destruction of the corona crisis. There have been 20 million new unemployment claims in the US over the last several weeks. As the small and medium-sized business that employ a not-insignificant portion of those 20 million begin to permanently shut their doors, how long will it take to crawl back to healthy employment levels?

As states open back up, will there be a "second wave" of infections? I don't know. A lot of epidemiologists think so. Maybe they're wrong. The states beginning to open back up now aren't following the Trump administration's guidelines. Maybe the guidelines are too strict and they were issued more to appease Democrats than for actual practical application. Maybe if there is a second wave, the public will be more scared of the economic fallout than they are of the virus, and they'll demand to let the chips fall where they may - the sort of sentiment expressed by the TX Lt Governor when he said, "There are more important things than living, and that’s saving this country for my children and grandchildren and saving this country for all of us ... I don’t want to die. Nobody wants to die, but man we gotta take some risks and get back in the game and get this country back up and running.” But maybe the public will still be more scared of the virus than they are of the economic carnage. No one knows how this is going to play out.

SWA is the strongest airline financially and arguably the best-positioned to take advantage of the recovery when it happens. No one doubts that a recovery will occur. The question is centered around how long a recovery will take, when it will begin, and what will permanently change as a result of covid? There is no consensus on any of that right now.

If the situation plays out more toward the pessimistic end of economists' projections, though, SWA (and all airlines) may need to scale way back in order to survive. If it plays out more like the optimistic projections, then we probably get by with no furloughs.

I'm not claiming to know which way any of this will go. Some respected experts are saying it might be fairly mild and some experts are saying it might be another Great Depression. Nobody knows how it's going to go. I'm cutting way back on my spending and focusing on my side business to be prepared as possible for a more worst-case scenario but hoping for the best.