There are no sure things. United mgmt and our union made specific successful efforts to avoid furloughts during Covid. Not every airline can say that. Present management has been vocal about wanting to make all efforts to avoid furlough in the future as they acknowledge it clearly affects employee goodwill. That statement is probably worth what you paid to post here - they also fully acknowledge that any major black swan is an all bets are off scenario but they look to those as opportunities to bounce back hard. We are also clearly trimming regional lift while buying boatloads of planes.

It sucks to jump to the bottom of a seniority list. But to me there are high risk moves and low risk moves and the jump to the big 3 and a few others seems like a pretty reasonable risk. I have a good friend at a regional who has shied away from making this jump for the past 10+ years due to risk aversion. Now he is actively thinking of applying again. That's 8-10k pilots ahead at every major in that timeframe. They're all good moves. Really they still are even for someone who waited that long. FWIW at UAL we hit I think 2500 newhires this year and we have a massive new training building going up with I think a dozen more sims coming online next year. I don't think that was a billion dollar plus vanity project.