And you would be right. Normal fall reduction. Through last year we were under staffed and will continue to be probably in the fall. I would GUESS that winter will bring a class back. Reason for that, in which Jon forgot to mention, is that all those who are furloughed will now need to go back through INDOC, Systems, Sims (full 10), IOE (full 20 hours), before being allowed back on the line. That will take nearly 3 months to get them back on the line.

There have been a lot of talks about captain upgrades too. Reason they did decide to not upgrade were as Jon mentioned, by the time they pull them out of the system this summer and had them in the left seat the summer flying would be done. And as we are we were understaffed and could not go through summer with FO's being pulled out of the system to be upgraded. We just simply did not have the FO's to cover that. However with the fall reduction we can now take the FO's out of the system and upgrade them without having a difficult time covering flights.

One thing to also keep in mind, yes fall brings reductions. But fall also brings VACATIONS. I would venture to say that nearly 70% of vacations occur between the months of September and March. And if you are senior and or lucky you might be able to pull a summer vacation off.

In the end, like Jon said we are understaffed at the moment. However if the company can continue to run thin they will. However the fact of the matter is breaking guaratnee means NOTHING. Its all about coverage. If I only fly 50 hours but am used for hot reserve 4 days of the month and am on an over night the rest, that's one less Fo they can use. And thus we currently lack that coverage right now. And perhaps this fall we will be more properly staffed and have that coverage. But I HIGHLY doubt it.

So by no means do I think we need 50 pilots back. But some indeed would be nice and we shall sit back and see what happens....