Originally Posted by
The stillest
It’s ok that you don’t understand how business functions.
those who run successful businesses know that humans are resources and that recruitment is important and worth spending money on
your black and white “analysis” is noted and it’s not worth trying to convince you of the definition of “Human Resources” and how critical the resource is to any business endeavor, and whether the economy is up or down.
and equating ‘aviate’ with “PFT from the 90’s” is laughable and makes me wonder if you lived through those times or just read about them in ‘Flying’ magazine
I think your suffering from a bad case of the sunk cost fallacy with Aviate. In good times, having a pipeline of talent in a tight labor market is prudent and forward looking. No argument there.
However, the good times and growth are gone. The labor market is about to be flooded with highly qualified pilots, and industry demand will be down for an estimated 3-5 years. That’s the estimate to get back to where we are, not a growth phase that would require a pipeline of new pilots.
Between the big 4 airlines, there’s likely to be 10,000 qualified pilots furloughed. When those pilots are recalled, there will be thousands more qualified pilots at the regionals to meet modest growth. In other words, there no reason for Aviate to exist for the the next 4-6 years based on an 18 month zero to hero training cycle.
UAL has announced suspension of CAPEX not directly related to the core mission. Further, the company is asking for deep concessions from labor.
Aviate is a business unit of UAL Corp training pilots to work at UAX airlines. This is not an expense that’s required by our core mission for at least 4 years, likely longer. UAL doesn’t need to run a flight school or even pay a single person to sit at a desk and sort minority, gay, straight, military, or multi-gender pilot applications. It’s not needed.
The last time United furloughed pilots. Pilot recruitment was shuttered completely for the better part of a decade. It just wasn’t needed. According to SK, COVID is worse than 9/11 and 2008 combined.
Aviate is a good idea, but only in a tight labor market during a growth cycle. Philosophically, for UAL to ask for cuts from labor while not being true to cutting non-essential CAPEX is disingenuous and insulting. In that light, my stance is full pay to the last day, don’t ask me to help a company that can’t help itself.