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To them, I’m sure it’s just cost savings pure and simple/numbers on a spreadsheet. If it’s more cost effective to cut people than keep people on property then they’ll furlough. If it’s more cost effective to keep people, then they won’t. If they can get those same savings via voluntary cuts (VEOP, or if the group agrees to concessions) then I’m sure they’d be happy to go that route to avoid the negativity of a furlough. If we don’t “play ball”, then I definitely think they’ll furlough, and we’ll be painted as the guilty party (“those greedy pilots would rather eat their young than save jobs”).Originally Posted by ChazzMMichaels
And there’s $15B cash in the bank, with projections to get cash burn ~0 by year end. Furloughs are not a significant factor in getting to that. I don’t post anything on skynet but I wish someone would ask in the next town hall how they justify the need for furloughs from a financial and priority perspective.
If the current VEOP numbers hold or continue to increase, my WAG is that they end up furloughing between 2000 - 2100 pilots total and spare the extra as a buffer, ready to phase out the rest as needed based on requirements. I think they’ll try to release as many VEOPs as quickly as they can, but that will be a process, ensuring their replacements are in place. My guess is they release roughly 2/3rds of the VEOPs by next summer and furlough the remaining difference (~2100) down to the 10,069 requirement number we’ve been hearing about this October. I think they’ll take a training time out next summer, hold what they got, and release the rest of the VEOPs next fall, bringing the numbers even lower. One sentence that’s been bugging me in BS’s first email to us explaining the MOAD, said they want 9400 active pilots in Q3 2021. I think this is how they get there. They attrit VEOPs and regular mandatory retirements (non-VEOPs that chose to stick around) for that last 6-700 pilots down to 9400 next fall. And then they’ll start recalling furloughs early winter 2022 to plus back up to 10,100 for summer 2022.
Thats my best guess, again, it’s a WAG, and it assumes their goals are 10,069 active pilots summer 2021, 9400 active pilots Q3 2021, 10,100 active pilots summer 2022, with 1700ish VEOPs and about 2100 furloughs. I’m sure how this actually plays out will vary greatly based on how quickly/slowly they can release VEOPs, and how the economic recovery plays out over the next several months as well.