He was a son, a father, a Naval aviator... but most of all he just wanted to graduate.

 

What if someone asked to straight up swap: Delta MD80 CA 2nd year pay (furloughed) Jetblue 320 CA right now?

 

Delta vs Jetblue
Like this? I mean I guess it’s year 1, but similar question asked 5 months ago. Or the 8+ year JB check airman now a newhire at DL. Guess you just never know. But some of the comments from 5 months ago are priceless (like JB won’t survive the next downturn, pay and seniority would be made up quickly, etc). I just hope for his sake he didn’t go. Don’t wish ill on any pilot groups, but it just goes to show how luck and timing can have a huge impact (pos and neg) what looks like a good career move.

 

Sucks for that guy or he could be lucky and Jetblue goes outta business and he has a seniority number at another carrier already.
or we merge and he is junior to himself.

 

Not the classiest move to gloat about potential furloughs. Schadenfreude really has no place in our industry as misfortune elsewhere has repercussions industry-wide.

 

He went.
It’s a tough one you just never know. You try to make the best decision you can with the information you have. But pilots definitely like group think. Add in my airline is better and so on and it can be a bad combo.

You just have people throwing out crap info that is based on their opinion or agenda not on facts. Heck if you read airliners.net there is still a group on there that thinks JetBlue goes BK first when all of our numbers point to us being one of the last to go.

What we know is we don’t know what will happen. It does seem that our slow growth small size and finically conservative approach, which we were all frustrated with may actually help us. (Yes I know about the stock buybacks)

The majors were using their size to kill us but the game just went from sumo wrestling to figure skating overnight.

 

That’s a head scratching decision even pre-Covid but that’s just my opinion. Not like you’re going from 8 year regional CA pay to a Legacy carrier where you make up the difference pretty close in year 1. Plus Delta really was aggressive hiring pilots the past several years, especially those with 30-40 years left in their flying career. The best an average aged new-hire can attain is narrowbody CA. Obviously that’s out the window now.

 

What if that United merger happened finally?

 

I’m against a merger, I’d prefer we just grow on our own, assuming we actually do grow again. I’d say it’s more probable than not someone dips there toe in the pool sooner or later after this settles down. They could argue with less demand theres too much capacity and no one can turn profits. With Jetblue continuing on with Europe, especially with low cost structured 321LR/XR that will put a dent in some wide body lucrative flying, albeit a small one. I don’t think anyone is in a financial position for merger right now, maybe southwest. Everyone is in survival mode, it’s basically ration as much food as you can and see who’s left at the end. Probably in a few years once the landscape is clearer. Either way, we are all shlt out of luck if loads don’t improve substantially. We are at 30% load factor on 120ish flights a day, that is not good, at all.

 

you better hope it’s after they furlough....
just hope we capitalize on this mess and come out in the other end.


I don’t know if we’ll ever see wide body flying again like it was in the past. Legacy’s parking much of their heavy lift. Even EK is looking to park 40%+ of their 380s. The efficiency of the GTF makes longer haul narrow body more lucrative. Boeing better get on the stick.