Some questions since you hypothesize:

What percentage of reduced volume will trigger your scenario in your opinion?
Realize that the aircraft size limits the ability to park and furlough.

Example: If you fly an A300 in the SDF-ORD-SDF market, realizing that much of the volume that is not time sensitive goes by truck (Yes, UPS is extraordinarily optimized. Only goes on an airplane if it can't make service by truck or team drivers) So for discussion, lets say domestic volume drops 25%.
Does UPS give up 75% of the remaining volume so we can park the A300? We do not have limitless smaller airplanes to substitute, though a few can be made) Which leads to the next question.

Are you thinking like a competitor to Fedex regarding market share and service (product) offerings and realize UPS will not backoff from a Fedex market? (Reason Sideshow made the comment about following Fedex).

Example: UPS decides to unilaterally pull domestic capabilty. This means UPS will have to let go of service market share if Fedex does not match the reduction. UPS has demonstrated thet they try to match Fedex service for service offering. They do very well putting it on trucks long before it goes on an airplane already. Reason they can let trucks go before airplanes in some cases since the later products can still make it by plane, the opposite is never true. This optimization makes it difficult to park airplanes and easier to park trucks. Goes back to first question.

How many furloughs do you believe an OT ban would absorb?

In other words, IPA has already demonstrated that an effective OT ban prevented 100 from being furloughed. (even with all the supervisors)

UPS can talk some high volume customers into different offerings, but not many. If you are a mail order company, customers expect NDA delivery times, if you are contracted to UPS and UPS says no more 0800/1030 delivery times, and your competitor uses Fedex with 0800/1030 delivery times, expect UPS to lose the business altogether. Goes back to question 2.

Nice thing having our friends at Fedex- Kind of like a competitor detente <g>

SD,

Thanks for making me feel a little better. :D I guess I can hold off that application to Home Depot, at least for now...

It's not fun being near the bottom.

SLPII

Especially after the '98 contract having such a good truck network did nothing but hurt, but now having a mature/max utilized truck network helps <g>. They MAY be able to combine a route or two (especially 2nd Day Air), but not much. They'll wait to see about DHL before they do anything. If it falls through it's a game changer. In the meantime don't expect anymore heavy lift orders until DHL pans/tanks either.

About a half-dozen DC8 C-checks (which I believe are required annually) were put on hold about 4 weeks ago. I believe they are on hold until the DHL deal is done. Also, the Boeing strike will affect the 2 new 747's and 3 767's scheduled for next year (there is one 747 BCF that is unaffected by Boeing).

Training after the 747-classic displacement is moving along, and all the fleets are becoming better manned. The DC8 is fat, and recently even the FE seat is fat. There are 21 more DC8 FE's who will complete training before peak. There are over 30 FE's to be trained after peak. We better get some more work....

What they can do is close a sort facility. Instead of sending one plane from gateway A to SDF and RFD, they get rid of the RFD flight. I know it would be extream, but maybe closing DFW or RFD and sending that volume to SDF. That would cut flights and jobs without hurting the customer. I think that would be WAAAYYY down the road, but don't think it can't happen.

I don't think we're in an economic meltdown. Call me an optimist, but I think it's more of a short-term major event than a long-term crisis. With that being said, I think big brown is probably one of the few companies poised to ride this out. I you need to seek refuge on a ship, this is the one of the best ones to ride. :)

Well, not quite - it comes mainly from the Commie News Network and al-Jazeera USA aka MSNBC. :rolleyes:

As far as furloughs? If they don't get some kind of bail out plan #2 - who knows what'll happen?

<BG> They do this all the time. UPS is always tweaking. Read the changes in the bid packets. Glad they do! After the 97 strike was settled, CAE closed up, it looked like RFD before that. No one was furloughed. Part of the reason everything doesn't come through SDF in the first place is volume limits on NDA. Even Worldport won't provide all the necessary business requirements.
The other reason is contingency. Think the SDF snow/ice storms. They have come to rely on the ability to move sort capability around. Fedex does same. (Where UPS got the idea <g>)

The OT shows an 8 getting picked up outta ROW in the next few days and going to SAT for the heavy check <g>
Sittin' A

I was aware of that one (803) before it hit the schedule. 701 in ROW will go in for a C-check before too long also. About a half-dozen others have been put on hold.

Quite a few are scheduled to go to GSO this month and early November (2 have already gone there), but not for C-checks, nor from ROW. They are tails that we are currently using going in for some type of MX with something to do with clearing up paperwork (not just the 3 that were in storage on the SDF ramp for so long).