Natca

Thats a good way to loose your medical.

ShyGuy

You at Delta now?

tallpilot

Well, the good news is if we don't have to aviate we can skip navigating and communicating too. I did find it amusing that the Aviate conference call said 'don't worry' there will be an even bigger pilot shortage next decade after this ****storm flushes out anybody intelligent enough to give up on this garbage career. Awesome.

Excargodog

I actually believe that to be true WHEN THE PAX COME BACK. Just don’t know how long that will be. Clearly this mess is going to discourage entry into the career field and has caused and will cause the premature retirements of hundreds of senior pilots and will sort of trap in the regionals a few senior regional pilots that Now just won’t have enough time to age 65 left to make starting In a new seniority system at the next level worth it. But what will really get hammered is new guys starting in 141 zero to hero programs. With regional bonuses pretty much gone and regionals not even paying for the ATP anymore - not to mention the very real possibility of more regionals coming under pressure next year from scope limitations due to major blockhour flying being so low in 2020, A whole lot if people who would have entered the career field either won’t or at least will delay their entry for a few years. That pretty much gives everyone with ANY 121 experience a huge head start in the rebound. Of course, for that to happen there has actually gotta BE a rebound.

tallpilot

That remains, 6 months into this mess, the quintessential question: how deep and how long. The first seems pretty clear as we’re completely stuck ~25%. Will an exogenous event (vaccine, etc) shock demand back up to a reasonable percentage of 2019 or is it going to be a half decade slog? While we wait will furloughs and lack of movement be the only consequences or will contracts be shredded once again? If they are not I’m pretty sure it will be the first and only time at least since 1978.

Imapylot

“will contracts be shredded once again?” A 15 hour a month guarantee reduction already occurred with zero input or vote from the pilot group so I’d say shredding the contract with a similar amount of input or warning wouldn’t be that hard to imagine.

pangolin

Was talking to a friend of mine. He's not in the industry. He said he and his family were considering a trip in November but were not sure about flying. NOT because it wasn't safe but because it just wasn't FUN anymore. No drinks. No snacks. Wearing masks. It's just not the experience it used to be - and we know THAT experience isn't what IT used to be either!

ALSO - since it's a 12 month look back in Scope, shouldn't that ALREADY be impacting regional flying?

pangolin

But your facts are wrong. We are NOT stuck at 25% - we are slowing but steadily increasing and we have been at 30 for a couple weeks and on the slow but steady rise. Check the "new" TSA Numbers thread.

Excargodog

I believe in most contracts it is applied annually, to avoid the possibility of having to fiddle with regional contracts monthly or whatever, since with some regional contracts (Skywest and Republic) the Major has less immediate control than - for instance — AA does on their WOs. And back on 31 Aug 2019, none of this COVID stuff had really hit yet.

And truthfully, percentage of total Mainline block hours - while written in to several CBA scope contracts, doesn’t ever appear to have been the limiting factor before this rather unique year. But with three months of scarcely any flying and only now starting to exceed 30% YOY, it would take a truly awesome fourth quarter recovery for these clauses not to get triggered. Of course, then it can be delayed - strung out - grieved by the major unions, and ultimately go to arbitration or court.

But from the viewpoint of the major unions, I just don’t see them wanting to grant scope relief from this constraint - not with their own guys on furlough. If you look at the Big Three forums, especially the UA one, there are a lot of angry people who believe their management is using this crisis for putting pressure on the pilots.

UA management was pushing hard for 76 seat scope relief even before this happened. With reduced loads they’d like it even more now. I think they would also prefer to keep regional flying higher to defend gates in their ‘fortress’ hubs to keep out the domestic competition who - at least in the early stage of the recovery - are going to be the LCC/ULCCs.

If they can’t fully utilize their allocated gates they are going to have to let JetBlue and SWA and Spirit and Frontier get their foot in the door.

But to the original question, no, I think more regionals are going to be closing. Compass, TSA, Expressjet.., they are only the start.

tonsterboy5

So people stopped flying altogether due to no snacks on short flights? They still offer drinks if you ask, unless of course you want alcohol and if your friends can’t be in a tube for a few hours without a drink they have other issues. If it’s the mask they will be shocked to realize just about everywhere makes you wear one. So maybe if they want snacks and drinks while not wearing a mask they should stay home since that’s their definition of “fun”. It’s called adapting to change. I bet all these people crapping on masks have a line or word in their cover letter along the lines of “flexible” “adaptable” etc etc. lies I tell you

Im not sure scope will have a huge impact, I could be wrong but even based off of current UAX hours, UAX is no where near 120%. I’m sure if they all of a sudden wanted to double UAX hours they might run into an issue but I doubt they will add that much back to UAX without adding to mainline which will keep the averages slowly rising on both sides.