CLazarus

Although I still innocently hope furloughs won't happen, I've been mulling over what the first order effects would be from an initial round or two. I've had some free time lately so I took a look at the most recent Seniority List and Base Roster from FT. I'm sure they are not 100% up to date, but they are all I have to look at. Having not been through this before, I am all ears to hear what guys have witnessed first hand or what I'm missing.

Here are some fuzzy numbers I've gleaned and simplified, they won't add up exactly since I'm not bothering to list each and every single FO BES:

Bottom 460ish pilots on the seniority list -
146 Airbus FOs - (EWR 67, SFO 51, DCA 16, LAX 11)
277 737 FOs - (EWR 76, SFO 61, LAX 55, IAH/DEN 25 ea, ORD 19, DCA 16)
37 756 FOs - (EWR 15, SFO/LAX 11 ea)

Next 490ish pilots down -
171 Airbus FOs - (SFO 58, EWR 42, ORD 23, DCA 20, LAX 17, DEN 9)
129 737 FOs - (EWR 28, SFO 35, IAH 20, DCA 19, DEN 15, LAX 12, ORD 11)
170 756 FOs - (EWR 87, SFO 46, LAX 21, DCA, 9)
8 777/787 FOs - SFO/EWR

No surprise, an initial round of up to 500 furloughs would mostly gut the coastal Bus/737 FO bases. I'm guessing there would be some NB displacements of junior FOs from the mid continental hubs to partially backfill the coasts (and slim down the ORD/DEN/IAH NB bases).

A second round of 500 or so would start to dig much more into the 756 fleet. I think the amount of augmented 756 flying out of EWR would be cut back dramatically, so mostly transcons and HI for coastal 756 crews. I assume 777/787 would pick up the slack for EWR augmented flying, and we wouldn't see them going between hubs much at all.

For the NB left seat and WB fleets in general, I think the company would muddle through with retirements/SRLs/COLAs/reduced line values rather than displacements. I don't see any good reason to retire an entire fleet en masse, it seems to me we could make do just fine initially with retiring the oldest 756s and Buses and storing some 737s.

I didn't try to look beyond the first 1,000 or so potential cuts because it gets too unpredictable for a guy with limited visibility. I know some tortured souls are throwing around extreme numbers for cuts, but I don't think a 30% cut in revenue translates directly to a 30% cut in pilots. In short, we don't need to return to the exact level of profitability we so recently enjoyed. If our revenue does stabilize back at 70% of what it recently was, we could probably approach the break even point while hanging on to >80% of our crews (at current pay rates!). We wouldn't be exactly profitable, but our burn rate would be much more manageable while we ride this out.

With luck, none of this will come to pass. And without luck, there will be plenty of time to revisit the subject again as it plays out. Hope someone finds this helpful. Peace.

The stillest

This doesn’t help at all, really. What information from the company are you privy to that we aren’t so that you can post this info? Or is this just another guess meant to calm my nerves?

especially in light of the medical news out of Chicago a few moments ago.

if we all keep talking about furloughs and cuts...well, we’ll get what we deserve.

cadetdrivr

Oct 1 is 5.5 months from now so I'm assuming we are not going to know much of anything in the next two months with any clarity. Despite occasional missed shots, our director of manpower planning is not a fool and will be able to set things in motion once he receives his marching orders.

So, if we start seeing significant displacements for training in Aug/Sept then we'll know which way the chess pieces are moving.

And if we don't that will also tell us plenty.

ugleeual

^^^THIS^^^ but I’d argue Jul/Aug

CLazarus

You are privy to everything I looked at. You can download the latest base roster and Seniority List from the Crew Resources page on FT. The Seniority List says "As of July 1, 2019" at the very top... but there are pilots listed at the bottom whom have U numbers that are from the last couple of months, ones that start with U372 (I personally know Jan 20 hires whose U numbers start with U370). Feel free to ignore what I surmised and draw your own conclusions if it is worth your time.

I'm not aware of any new medical news out of Chicago and don't see anything at a glance, a link would be helpful.

OVC010CB

​​​​​​https://www.statnews.com/2020/04/16/...-to-treatment/

Market futures are up about 3.7% tomorrow.

WarEagle28

This^^^^^

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/16/sp-5...ronavirus.html

TomC

I am curious what is going on at TK. Some buds in middle of upgrade training got sent home, were told they would restart middle of May, and now there training schedules are wiped. Follow TK and I think we will have a better idea of the fleet plan and staffing for next year. As soon as UAL parked the 737 fleet in the lost decade, those PIs bumped into the bus fleet. The bottom PIs got bumped to the line, and soon were furloughed. And long term, we won’t know we are out of the woods until they start hiring more PIs. My 2 cents.

AxlF16

AFAIK they haven’t made any further decisions on bid cancellations. They are deciding how to resume training. Because there has been such a big gap it may not really be practical to just pick up where you left off. More info should be flowing soon. I wouldn’t necessarily read the schedule removals in a bad way.

TomC

I’m not reading the removal of training per se...but to the original poster I am looking at overall numbers of PIs on fleets and evaluators. I believe once they sort that out we will have a real good idea of fleet size and pilot staffing. Follow the dots to surplus, displacements, etc. worked well in the past.