I’m winding the watch until OCT.

 

Agreed. Let’s see how this unfolds.

 

Im open to discussions in August to have something in place for Oct/Nov. But not until all voluntary options have been exhausted.

 

Ed said at the Town Hall that there will be no furloughs until after October 1, and even after that none were planned. He said we were the strongest going into the crisis and will be the strongest coming out of it. He said the pilots were the first to step up to help and insinuated that we would be working together going forward. My take is something can be worked out to save additional money. He said pilots had already made contributions with less hours. Sounds pragmatic to me.

 

George Carlin had a funny line on watch winding.

 

At a new airline or a new career?

 

We will see after the surplus bid this month.

 

Answer the question? LOL, ok LTJG Kaffee (A Few Good Men reference, obviously).

First of all I don't know what they're doing WRT the loans, nor do I know the exact terms and conditions of the loans aside from very general highlights that may or may not even be the case. Do you? That said, I'm generaly in favor of them taking the loans. I thought it was stated that they did apply for them because they had to get the application in prior to the deadline, but hadn't yet decided to file for them, which was in line with what everyone else is doing. Is that correct, and if not then what is the case at PPOS?

As for the SIL's and early outs, I've talked about that at length. I am in favor of both. However the effectiveness of early outs is very limited and hits a pretty hard wall at a certain number. AA's exact number may or may not be the same as our's, as it depends on numerous factors like relative age/seniority in each category and we have a LOT of categories thanks to marketing running all aspects of the airline for quite some time. SIL's are a nice short term savings and I am in favor of that. There is long term savings there as well, but progressively less and that may go to near zero if they don't have a constant and large amount of takers. The mentality "why should I SIL when I can just get full ALV to do nothing?" is very real.

I agree that the company made a big mistake rescinding them for the petty and pathetically low ROI they think it will produce. We're getting a WOOP WOOP PULL UP! and they're all heads down running the checklist a for zone temp controller #2 caution light with the ridiculous obsession with an FA union as they indulge the FA's with the abject nonsense of comparing themselves to us instead of their unionized FA counterparts. If that's all they care about, then none of this matters because this will probably all be decided long before that stupid little battle is won or lost.

We're so far not seeing the ledaership required from the top. Hopefully that changes. But there is no way we skate out of this without some hits, unless we're truly on the verge of a rapid and near term V shaped recovery. I'm just not seeing that.

 

Both.

But I don't want to and I don't think very many do. I'll accept whatever happens and have been preparing for contingencies in this career as best I can for a long time.

 

Gloopy said: I thought it was stated that they did apply for them because they had to get the application in prior to the deadline, but hadn't yet decided to file for them, which was in line with what everyone else is doing."

Denny says:

First of all I'm assuming you meant "didn't" instead of "did." If that's the case, then I guess they don't need the money that badly. If they did, they would have come to the decision to apply for the loans well before the deadline. No management team is stupid enough to let a deadline like this pass without making a conscious decision NOT to apply for the loans. If you actually think they hadn't decided yet, I think you need to rethink that. (To many uses of the word think but you get the point.)

If Management doesn't feel like it needs to take a loan from the US Government, then it certainly doesn't need a any kind of "loan" from us either. At this point, any kind of "loan," "relief" or whatever we give them is a mere pittance to what the US Government loan would have been.

Hold strong!!!

Denny