He's not wrong though. Pan Am, Eastern, Braniff, etc were from a different time. A time of intense industry shakeup and competition from startups in a newly de-regulated airline world. While those were all big names, they are only big airlines in our memories. The reality is that each of those airlines were smaller than even Spirit is today. Conversely, the complete failure of one of the “big three” today would have a massive economic impact. That’s not to say that they couldn’t have rough times, furlough employees, etc, but it would be very unlikely they would be allowed to follow Pan Am into the history books.

To your other point, yes. We have double furloughed pilots from the 9-11/‘08 recession era, but they are now all back on property if they chose to come back - which is exactly Margaritaville’s point. He never said someone wouldn’t be furloughed, but eventually they will likely have their job again if they choose.