Originally Posted by
CincoDeMayo
2024-3
2025-20
Furloughs will be tricky compared to normal industry furloughs in the past.
Normally it’s “we aren’t making money, we are shrinking, we need less pilots”
With the engines, the draw down is slower and measured and they have to factor in attrition without backfilling with new hires.
My guess is they will be fine on FOs with attrition and not backfilling the next 18 months. Captains will be over staffed and they will need to decide how to deal with that. I assume JBLU will have the ultimate say on this, once merger is approved
I think the bigger problem is not knowing exactly how many aircraft will be out of service at any given time. Talking to a gaggle of maintenance guys the other night there are a number of factors that make it hard to pinpoint when exactly each plane will come down and how long for each. It's also not necessarily a first in, first out operation either. So some planes it might just be down long enough for an engine swap and back in service, while others sit a while.
From a staffing standpoint this makes it difficult to project how low they can take crew levels. Underutilization and inability to crew flights during a network disruption is the risk you take running too lean, and our meltdown elasticity hasn't been stellar.