Well, not good news at all. But let's take a look at the numbers. The latest status 15 report (AMR lingo for seniority list) shows 10.35 pilots for every MD-80. The press release indicated a fleet reduction of 40-45 MD-80's, or 465 pilot jobs at risk. What the press release fails to mention, is that AMR is still planning to take delivery of 34 737's in 2009 and 36 in 2010. The plan still remains to swap those out 1 for 1 (mostly) with MD-80's. What remains to be seen is whether these aircraft groundings are an acceleration of the MD-fleet retirement, or a permanent reduction. Remember, the 11-12% is for the FOURTH QUARTER, overall annual mainline reduction is 3-4 %.

The plan before this announcement was to have a net gain in aircraft by the end of 2009, all they are really doing is flattening out the growth and using large numbers in a single quarter to increase the physiological effect. It's an old AMR trick.

My guess is that furlough recalls will be stop for a while, but I doubt we will see outright furloughs this year. JMHO.