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Old 05-13-2020 | 07:44 AM
  #673  
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rickair7777
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From: Engines Turn or People Swim
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Originally Posted by sailingfun
The flaw in your last argument is that most airlines look 18 to 24 months out when making a decision to furlough. They will carry a surplus for some time.
Normally. But revenue essentially went to zero within a few weeks and stayed there, they know it will come back later this year or next year to some new lower baseline. After that it will depend on the economy for future growth.

It's possible we may see some panic furloughs, looks like UAL is headed there, priority to stop the bleeding asap by massively shrinking the company and accepting that they may lose market share if the recovery comes faster than expected.

AA is taking the opposite approach, looks like they are retaining capacity to jump on market share if there's a rapid recovery... but they are obviously going out on a limb, no way they can carry that much staff for an extended period if the recovery doesn't pan out the way they seem to hope.

Also I'm frankly alarmed that AA and UA are apparently headed in such different directions... means that not even management with all of their tools has any kind of consistent model for how this will play out.

You do have to realize that it's really starting to look like vaccine timing will be crucial to economic recovery... many states have authoritarian regimes who are hell-bent on lockdown until the problem is solved, but herd immunity will never happen under full house-arrest so it's basically lockdown for life or until a vaccine arrives. Several of those states are large enough to drag down the US economy all by themselves...
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