Originally Posted by Flymeaway

You need to keep in mind management's goals when considering this question. In a downturn they are bleeding money and that has to stop. A company cannot continue to lose money month after month. Management is responsible to stop that from happening. We, as labor, might want them to throw all that money our way, but that isn't their job. If they aren't bringing more money in than they are spending, they have to fix that immediately.

And there are two conflicting considerations when it comes to pilots. One is that in the long term, it's more cost effective to have fewer pilots working more hours. Each pilot costs overhead. Health insurance, parking pass, CQ, line checks, all the various administrative stuff. Additionally, if the number of block hours they can sell is less than the MMG of their pilots, then they're paying the difference with no benefit. This would lead them to immediately furlough as many pilots as necessary to have everyone flying 90-100 block per month.

On the other side, for every two pilots you furlough, you have to do downgrade training for one, plus rehire and retrain when you bring them back. That takes both time and money.

Normally MMG isn't a big pay issue because management wants everyone to fly as close to that 100 hour limit as possible. As long as you don't give up pay rates, any loss of MMG should be temporary or irrelevant. You do need to be careful that your pilots can still put food on the table with whatever MMG you agree to go down to though. Taking MMG down to 10 hours per month to keep everyone just means everyone starves. There is a happy medium. Obviously, at the regionals where pay rates are lower, you need a higher MMG to keep food on the table than you would at a major.