Originally Posted by OnTheMeridian

This wasn't the result of any "ordinary" recession. The economic collapse in 2008 was massive. We hadn't seen anything even close to it since the great depression. But that wasn't the only factor. The whole Bernie Madoff thing happened at the same time. We lost many aircraft worth of clients because of him.

But probably the biggest factor leading up to the furloughs was Kenny Dichter. Netjets purchased dozens of aircraft just to service the Marquis crowd. When Dichter left us holding the bag on that one we ended up with dozens of unencumbered aircraft.

Combine all that and yeah, Netjets furloughed. It didn't help that RTS had committed to purchasing a lot of Hawker 400XP's which we had no clients for.

As was said, Netjets is structured very differently now.. I certainly wouldn't use the word "never" in regards to future furloughs. Who can predict just how bad things can get from time to time? Life never ceases to surprise me. But when it comes to recessions that are more typical to the economic cycle I'd say there's very little for our pilots to worry about.