The fact is no one knows at this moment in time how many furloughs will happen. I say "no one" because I don't think the company can say with confidence what the flying will look like. Things are changing rapidly on a monthly, even weekly or daily, basis as evidenced by all the schedule changes lately.

That being Kirby stated on the Flight Operations Town Hall that management is expecting revenue to be down 30% in the 4th Quarter. Of course, they hope it is better than that but hope isn't a strategy and it's foolish not to plan now for this eventuality. So a 30% revenue decline would need to be offset by 30% cost cuts across the airline. We all know what that means to the every day employee: reduced head count, pay, benefits, or combination thereof. But one thing he pointed out was that when it comes to pilots, it isn't necessarily linear in how that is achieved because of the unique aspect of our jobs. Unlike other work groups, we have a mandatory retirement age, we only fly one airplane type at a time, etc. Any furlough adds it's own costs with displacements, training then recalls and more training. It costs more to furlough more, and as Kirby stated if we furloughed an equivalent amount it would take years (I believe he said 3-5 years) to get everyone back if we needed to ramp up quickly.

I'm not insinuating the picture is rosy by any means as this has me very worried even at 60% seniority depending on which projections one believes. I'm preparing for the worst but optimistic given Kirby's own words at the time he said them that we don't see 30% of our 13,250 pilots shown the door.