At most US airlines furloughs occur in reverse seniority order...I don't know for sure about midwest, but here is what will probably happen...

Junior FO's get furloughed, and junior CA's get downgraded to FO.

In this case where a whole fleet type is going away, it is more complicated. Since the MD is probably more senior than the 717, the company will probably have to retrain the MD CA's to be 717 CA's. Then they will have to retrain 717 CA's and MD FO's to be 717 FO's (unless their CA's are all dual-seat qualified anyway). Then the junior-most FO's get flushed.

This kind of "bump-and-flush" can be economically diasasterous for an airline...They have to pay all kinds of senior people to sit around doing nothing while they wait for training slots, they have to eat all the extra training costs, and they can't even furlough the junior FO's until their replacements are trained. This kind of scenario can trigger chapter 11.

 

Reduction in flying for SKW out of MKE was known well before the decision to park the MD-80s, and I don't think the two are related other than that both are for fuel. We lost a total of 4 lines for July (not too bad for losing 2 aircraft).

I actually don't think the grounding of the MD-80s will hurt us much in MKE. 717s will have to be shifted around to keep a couple of markets, which may actually lead to an increase in CRJ flying. Throw us a couple turns to DCA and BOS, and it frees up a 717 to maintain a MD-80 market.