Originally Posted by Panama Jones

There will be no additional furloughs. The only scenarios in which the company would be able to get around the no-furlough clause in the contract would be either:
A) Bankruptcy, or
B) Relief granted by the MEC

Anything else would precipitate a lengthy and costly court battle and drive whatever morale that exists straight into the sewer.

There is other evidence that the company does not intend to furlough anytime soon. For one thing, our schedule is only going to increase in the months ahead--September is the low point for traffic. But more important is the fact that ASA is running a pretty tight ship. Among all DCI carriers (with the exceptions of SkyWest, Freedom and Shuttle America/Chataqua) only Pinnacle has fewer crews per flight. Let me explain:

I looked at all flights among DCI carriers last Tuesday and compared that number to the number of currently active pilots at each carrier (flying for DCI). I think this is much more useful than pilots per airframe, because this shows what Delta is actually doing, since we all know there are plenty of 50-seaters sitting dormant at the moment. Of all the DCI (again, excluding SkyWest and the two Republic carriers, since I couldn't get accurate data for them) only Pinnacle has fewer pilots per flight than ASA.

Here are the numbers:

Carrier flights active pilots ratio
ASA 836 1559 1.86
Compass 154 365 2.37
Comair 403 1157 2.87
Pinnacle 784 1303 1.66
Mesaba 559 1090 1.94

Clearly Comair is on the fat side, and surprisingly Compass is looking fat too. I understand Comair has another round of furloughs coming in November (?) and so their ratio will change. I wish I knew how many of SkyWest's, Freedom's, Chataqua's and Shuttle America's pilots flew in the DCI system, although I understand that if a base serves more than one carrier then it's tough to sort out.

I think the bloodletting is over for now. Anything is possible, and certainly if all 20 CRJ-200s are phased out next year to go sit in the desert instead of picking up other flying, that may change my assessment. But I think all the doom and gloom is much ado about nothing.