Originally Posted by
gloopy
I can respect that, if that's what's happening. But mass fleet parking and multi thousand furloughs (implimented, not just announced for the future) will prove they are panic collapsing to profitability which cost many times more than it saves even for the medium term, and that they are doing so on a bad data snapshot. Whatever we do, it doesn't have to be set in stone for the magical Oct 1 "deadline".
Zero chance of that. Find any seat map with a 6' ring around every pax and count the LF. That's not just middle seat blocking, its more like 1 pax per 9 seat section. Even if we could lock in today's fuel prices that's not viable even for a little bit. I guarantee that's not the long or medium term plan. If it was, we'd need a fleet of thousands of planes to "fy the plan" and would need to ramp up hiring immediately.
I agree they don't know yet, and its understandable they don't know yet. What I'm concerned about is that they feel forced to solidify long term and irreversable big moves based on rediculously bad data snapshots right now. There's no doubt they feel enormous peer pressure from the analcyct types to out do United's panic displacement as just one example.
As for October, while that may be a CARES Act issue to some extent WRT workers, that isn't a firm deadline WRT medium term fleet plans. A significant amount of demand will have returned prior to that, we just don't know how much. But cutting to worst case projections guarantees the outcome is devastating. At least we'll finally get to see if we truly have the world's greatest team ever assembled or not. It won't be worth the price of admission, but still really interesting to find out.
I think the slow play from management is warranted because time is on our side and it will only clarify things. The fact that we don’t have a fleet plan yet and that they admit initially it will be wrong and then require continuous revision means they are doing exactly as you and I hope. They are remaining noncommittal and flexible. October is the earliest they can consider bankruptcy and furloughs, that’s its significance. People are whining about reserve but that’s basically our best case scenario. Sit reserve in your over staffed category and when flying appears in open time that means we have filled an airplane to our 60% capacity and it’s time to roll out the next one. Shuttle ops on a network scale until we see steady demand at a level where trips can be built reliably and some normalcy returns.
You just seem concerned about things that don’t matter. Our management has always thouught and acted independently and with capacity discipline, I expect that to continue. They will destroy any traction by flooding the market with unsold seats. ULCC are not a threat if we do it to ourselves. This will be like watching the returns on election night. Just go to bed because they won’t know until the morning anyway and there will be recounts so certainty will be delayed until the judge (passengers) rule on the winners and losers.