Originally Posted by gloopy

Of course. While most of that number is directly related to the artificial draconian insanity overreaction we implimented, we don't know how many jobs will come back versus stay gone. I suspect many bars and restaurants may never reopen. Also this could accelerate the inevitable Blockbuster-esque demise of brick and mortar movie theaters who were only mostly even around pre virus in the first place because they artifically held desired content hostage. However we could also see a resurgence of American manufacturing assuming the national sell outs on both sides of the fake isle put the country first which is possible but by no means certain. I do think we'll see some degree of it though, even if we only partially capitalize on the opportunity instead of fully.

The 88/90 instant retirement is a huge capacity pull, as is the mandatory removal of 35 large RJ's and seat pulls from many more if a single pilot is furloughed. In addition I'm sure this will swing the needle on not doing expensive MX checks on ancient 320's and ER's on an airframe by airframe basis. Beyond that, any more fleet retirements will have to coincide with replacements otherwise we will become drastically and irreversably smaller for many, many years. The window of cost savings for doing such a move is relatively narrow and limited in its upside anyway. The downside is massive and will cost many, many times more than the savings over an even medium timeframe.

As to our "fleet plan" coming out this week or next week, if its anything other than 88/90 retirememt as far as fleets go, they're just panicking and trying to collapse to profitability which is guaranteed not to work, unless there are potential quick ramp up options they're not sharing with us, which is always possible. There's probably some awesome AC deals out there, and DL has too many fleets. The 88/90 pull will help consolidate that into a more realistic fleet plan while pulling a lot of capacity short term yet while allowing prompt replacement if needed. Much more than that is a huge gamble that's only guaranteed to destroy medium term revenue and sacred profits for only possible and very limited short term savings.

Along those lines, has any airline renegotiated AC leases and gates/fees? Seems like it would be incredibly easy if they all did it in mass. Call their bluff together and see if they'll self collapse and choke on unused assets no one can buy right now in a desperate attempt to extract full pay for.