Given that a furlough will fall mainly on first and second year hires, and downgrades would fall mainly on those with 4-5 years on property, furloughing 500 pilots and downgrading 250 captains for 9 months until the summer Of 2021 would only save about $40 million in salaries. While you wouldn’t see the training churn you would in an airline with multiple fleet types, neither would it be negligible. Just lowering ALV to the guarantee would probably save almost that much money.

it’s very possible that management will decide - like the WN management apparently has - that this is an opportunity to seize market share from the Big Three while they are handicapped by the loss of their own international flying. If that were the case they well might just not furlough or downgrade at all and keep their cheapest labor on board, flying aircraft at less than break-even fares to gain markets and gates, then gradually ease up prices to where they are again generating profits as the recovery happens.

It all depends upon how they see the recovery playing out. Clearly, between the additional Fed loans available to them and the recent sale of stock, they have the liquidity to put the chips on the table if they want to place that sort of a bet.