Originally Posted by
duvie
Viperstick,
Nobody knows what demand looks like for fall 2021, so both sides of the argument are a gamble. As far as I understand your train of thought, you are essentially calling Kirby‘s bluff on the 3900 number, because of the effect it would have on TK‘s ability to train. so in that scenario, perhaps seniority numbers 2850 to maybe 4500 from the bottom keep their full pay for another five months until their training center (seniority) equivalents can be furloughed.
I think this is one of the more interesting reasons to have voted no, however when I went down this rabbit hole, I think it would require a lot of cash burn for the months it took to train replacements… And would still result in the displacement of thousands of mid and upper tier pilots. If Scott Kirby had more years at the helm, I think perhaps he would have more leeway to gamble with staffing. As it is, I personally don’t think he would’ve had an option if he wanted to remain CEO, other than to right-size our staffing pretty quickly. Demand has been far more sluggish than anyone really predicted, so I personally do not think 3900 furloughs would’ve been enough… so more jobs would certainly have been on the table. As has been stated, TK‘s ability to train it’s really not as much of a bottleneck, when your block hours Are still hovering in the 30% of normal range.
I think you are right that we absolutely solve a problem for SK that does not benefit us… But I believe that the ability to get the company thinking more long-term again, will almost certainly decrease total furlough numbers and help us all avoid becoming UAL circa 2010. A lot of people closer to the center of this argument have stated that there are some glaring problems with the TA, I think you were absolutely right that the training issue was one of them…
Duvie,
In another post, I said exactly that--we should "call" Kirby's bluff. Yes, demand is currently in the crapper and is likely to remain so for awhile. However, we still need pilots to fly and the Guppy is our most prevalent airframe.
The Guppy TI manning is the true bottleneck. As you correctly identified, furloughing as deeply as threatened would have decimated Guppy TI manning and drawn out the movement of pilots from more senior fleets/seats to the Guppy and exacerbated cash burn. My argument all along has been Kirby could not have furloughed to the threatened 3900+ (perhaps not even to the WARNed 2850) without severely drawing out the retraining process--exactly why we have United pilots manning TK instructor positions. I believe what we actually did was trade away a contractual furlough protection (having line pilots staff TK who are under the furlough gun) to save near term furloughs in exchange for reduced MPG and the ability to run TK at full bore until the manning problem is solved. You've got the very junior part of the list now happy to keep their job for another eight months, but you just put a big target on the backs of those at the top of the bottom tier and the bottom of the middle tier for next summer that arguably either wouldn't have been there or would have been there later (and while still drawing full MPG in the meantime). Oh, and we just paid the carry cost for the unneeded pilots until next summer.
A theory? Yes, but I believe there's ample evidence to support this being more than the ravings of a lunatic. First, TK recently put out a job announcement for 30-50 new Guppy TIs, purportedly for the return of the MAX, but 30-50 is pretty close to the number of TIs that will be furloughed under recent threats. Second, the TA specifically incentivized Guppy (and Sparky) guys to downgrade to the other seat, rather than the Bus or 756, by offering pay freezes at their old seat rate. Why? Logically, to reduce the training footprint of these downgrading pilots and thus help TK throughput.
Ultimately, we'll find out if we won a big stupid prize next summer. We've already played the big stupid game.