Originally Posted by
iahflyr
I mostly agree with your thoughts, but the biggest fallacy is that training costs actual money. It does not. Training is free. Training has an “opportunity cost” in that if someone is in training, they are being paid, yet not on the line making money. However right now when you can’t furlough anyone until Oct 1, there is zero opportunity cost as a pilot is either sitting at home being paid, or in training being paid. The cost of training right now is $0.
Fortunately United seems to realize this, which is why they announced a large displacement bid and are has training effective dates starting almost immediately.
American published their displacement bid but it is much smaller, and Delta still has yet to make a move. Any training after October 1 will have an opportunity cost associated with it.
Training cost has real cost to the extent that you are forced to do extra training events that you would not otherwise have ever been forced to do, although granted, starting the training Before the 1 October date ameliorates the greater part which is the opportunity cost. But there is also the flip side.
Eventually, international flying WILL come back, and those widebody international guys displaced to narrow body aircraft (that many were not even previously typed in) will now be bidding back into their old equipment (or whatever has replaced it) generating new training events and these will have the associated lost opportunity costs.
And these are issues (and expenses) that an airline flying a single aircraft type - like SWA, NK, or F9, simply isn’t going to have to deal with. All they are going to do is downgrade junior captains and furlough junior FOs until the flying comes back and then upgrade and rehire which is going to cost less. Not saying everybody can’t survive or that I want anyone to be furloughed, just that in this situation as I see it developing, this is advantage LCC/ULCC. If international flying should somehow come back first it would be advantage Top 3.
I’m not emotionally invested in this, that just seems to me to be the way the cards read.