Originally Posted by mathteacher

as a parting effort to assist the folks having to make a tough decision i had my mba class (i teach operations analysis and decision science) make predictions on how many pilots ual would need january 2022 using mathematical/economic models from 2001 and 2008. All they could use was the relationships between the real economy and airline pilot numbers at ual. No factoring in covid, just economic data and forecasting software called "crystal ball problem solver". They used three programs...monte carlo simulation, simplex method and regression analysis. Data from the real economy was unemployment rate, disposable income, savings rate, credit card debt, inflation, oil prices, real estate prices and household income. They did not know any nuances about how tk works, or pilots retiring or any airline stuff. They used only the 2001 time frame, and the 2008 time frame to build their model. They used capacity at the airline as an equivalent measure for # of pilots which took out different airplane types. There were 6 teams of 4 students each that worked the problem. Students backgrounds were in hr, finance, supply chain and the military. No pilots in the group so completely naive. I provided the number of pilots from public sources for 2001, 2008 and today. We used the real unemployment rates, the u6 rate, instead of the headline number which is usually 5% lower. As an example our real u6 now is about 20%, not 15%. Did not look at all at legacy cal, just old ual alone.

Take it or leave it, garbage in garbage out but the best i could think of to assist in the decision process....90% confidence factor which is so-so for corporate decisions...80% being high risk, 95% being low risk...

Student answers were within 500 pilots for each team...on january 2022 ual will need a high of 10,150 and a low of 7, 450. Most likely, the highest probability is around 9500. For what it is worth to assist.

My advice, find a good ops analyst, or if you guys have an mba or know an mba dust off the opes text you used as a door stop for you masters and run your own numbers. If i'm close i hope it helps. If i'm way off my apologies.