apples and oranges. Breeze needs a contract more than the pilots. The metal doesn’t move if there’s no pilots to fly it. By next summer all of the legacies and major airlines will be competing for 1500 hour pilots, not just regional pilots. Then what will Breeze do? Even a recession will just buy them a little bit extra time. Short of another black swan event the train has left the station for needing pilots to cover all these retirements. And that will generate a lot of competition for pilots over the next few years industry-wide.

I think Neeleman called this scenario wrong, and now he’s just trying to salvage the pieces.