Originally Posted by
wjcandee
Cujo, you were handling the naysayer very well, so I didn't get involved in poking at him. But the fact is that the company busted its butt to find profitable flying while keeping people employed. Military is at the whim of the military, and the vacation charters were questionable for some time. However, with like every American family wanting to travel right now, and the ability to go to a wide variety of international destinations severely constrained, the Hawaii Charters and such should come screaming back now. That was certainly what everybody was hoping for, and it seems to be the case. As to the other big planned Charter route, I don't know what it was, so I don't know whether it was domestic or International to a country that isn't well vaccinated at the moment. Other kinds of flying, like incentive Charters, should also come back significantly in the late summer and fall. Trade shows and such are also picking up, so that aspect of business travel, as many of us expected, is going to come back simply because business is best conducted in person. People can argue about that, but the moment a competitor seals a big deal because its sales people spent time with the client in person, everybody else will fall in line and start doing it again.
looking at things now, without being jingoistic, we are very lucky to live in this country. It's absolutely shocking how many bureaucrat-run developed countries are still sitting and waiting for a strong vaccine supply, not to mention the developing ones. Just amazing that Japan is the mess that it is, but the structure and operation of their Healthcare System, and the manner in which their government operates, explains a lot. Aggressive entrepreneurship by the US govt, in the face of a lot of naysayers, turned out to be just brilliant. And the idea of financing three different types of vaccines, with two manufacturers taking a shot at each one, is the reason that we got one kind that turned out to work very well. Unlikely that any other country would have supported that.
Thank you, and agreed. Thanks for the second opinion too. I was correct about the 14 day recall from RLA summer leave being used too, getting guys back sooner. I’m still betting we’ll be hiring by Fall. With the rumors of new flying, and how fast the normal flying is returning, plus the number of guys going to legacies, purple & brown, they should start the hiring process sooner rather than later or we will end up big time short staffed with lots of trip extensions.
They could really slow/stop the attrition by fixing our retirement. Our rates were competitive but are starting to fall behind, but the retirement difference is literally a 9-16% difference in compensation. Over 10-20 years that’s a lot of money.