Big difference between the two. At least management has a vested interest in increasing MG when things eventually do recover, where as they never ever ever have an interest in increasing rates.

Not saying reduced MG is good (its not), I'm just clarifying that its a helluva lot better than reduced rates.

It's happened before... but the airlines may not go for that.

The last round of negotiations at the majors, and especially the regionals, saw the COMPANY fighting for higher pay in the first three-ish years, so they could compete in the pilot market. Candidates who liked everything else about an airline were being turned off by low starting pay... me included, I ruled out several majors because I wasn't going to take a pay cut for longer than one year, and not much of one at that.

The problem with doing it now is two-fold.

1) As you said, not many will be on that scale for long anyway so it doesn't save much money near-term.

2) When hiring resumes, the airlines might find they need to compete for candidates again... and the union will not just let them raise first-year pay, they'll hold that hostage for broader gains as a matter of course.

Not much upside for the company, but potential downside. Especially for regionals, who may not have seen the last of the pilot shortage.

Rick, you’re not the only one. I too gave much too much credit. Complete lack of perspective leading to shifting goalposts - nobody seems to remember why we locked down in the first place (to manage ICU capacity), much less do people comprehend that the virus will necessarily spread unless we force another Great Depression.

Very good observation, ICU is no where near to max capacity in many areas, we have an abundance of ventilators and everyone is manufacturing PPE in some form. When infection rates are posted by the news the overwhelming majority are mild cases that don't require hospitalization.

With Gene Hackman on the narration. Solid point. No school like the old school.

And a lot of the positive cases being released aren't even current. There was a guy on the local Houston radio the other day talking about how they were showing 1000 new cases the day before but when it was looked at, only 130 of those cases were people who had been tested in the month of September. The vast majority were tests from over a month ago, even going back as far as late May, early June. It is almost like someone is taking all those positive cases and releasing them in a manner to make it look like the cases were spread out over more time. He was saying that the numbers were actually many times higher than they were reporting and immediately fell off, now that all those positive cases from months ago are coming in, they can artificially keep the newly infected rate up...