JR came into my ground school class the day after they announced the 10 CRJ's were going to ASA and said we were 100 fat. 70 over in the Saab and 30 over in the CRJ.

He also said that before they even thought about furloughs they would be offering early retirements, LOA, and would be lowering the lines to 72-75 hours. So this early retirement thing is not a step towards merging airlines it's their response to the excess of pilots we now have. It just took them some time to come up with details of the early retirement...