I am not sure but my guess is there are 60-80 in the pool. I know for sure they cancelled 2 Brasilia classes and 1 CRJ class. I think each had 20 in each and there may have been a 4th class.

My guess is they won't be interviewing again until next year. I think it would be lucky if half of the pool ever makes it to training. I am sure 1/2 will find other jobs in the meanwhile.

Midwest Air is cutting their flying by 40% and this may affect SkyWest. It is tough because of course we all want to work for the better companies and not settle but it is just a guess when/if they interview again.

I know it sounds mean, but they are a healthy company and will prosper if, not when, one of the other regionals fold. Unfortunately, a bad economy wipes a lot of companies out of business. It has happened with the banks and now the airlines. SkyWest will hang in and prosper. So will Southwest and all the other companies that are doing decent right now.

Tough time to be looking for a job.

 

Once SkyWest gets through the pool, I'd hope the United and Midwest pilots that are getting furloghed this year have first opportunity to work here if that's their desire. After that they'll be plenty of other furlouged pilots from the other airlines to choose from, most with RJ time, if not CRJ time.

How many of the Skyway pilots made it to SkyWest? How many are in the pool?

 

There were only maybe 20 SYX guys that interviewed over there, and maybe 10-15 were hired. None ever made it to training since it was shut down before they were ever offered class dates. Many went to AirTran, Republic, Compass and Mesaba.

 

I think our hiring is all going to depend on what happens with the UA schedule over the next 6 months. I have a hard time seeing UA parking a bunch of planes and axing the frequencies outright. Their bread and butter is international flights, and they need traffic to feed the big boys and the guppys' provide a ton of that feed.

Here is a bit of a scenario I envision--and I may be way off so guys, please feel free to chime in: UA feels they need people to come into a hub and out internationally to make money. They also want people overseas buying tickets to come to come here to help fill the flights on the way back. They know they will have a lot harder time getting passengers when they say "we can get you to/from the states, but we dropped service to all cities near you so now you need to buy a ticket on Southwest to start/finish your trip." It will drive people to look at other airlines where pax might be able to fly the entire trip on AA or DL. They can't get rid of all those flights because it will reduce how competitive they are.

I read an article in Crains Chicago Business that for example said ORD-BOS is going to lose 1% of the flights but 27% of the seats. ORD-LGA is going to gain flights but lose seats. Those are just a couple changes mentioned. That sounds an awful lot like RJs replacing mainline planes. That could mean growth for us and that is why I think we will wait and see what UA does before we hire.

 

we got about 6 here on the line now and several in the pool.

 

Each of the majors seems to be taking a different strategy on capacity reduction. AMR & DAL are whacking both mainline and regional capacity. NWA & UAL, if I read their announcements correctly, are reducing mainline capacity, and as you suggest, largely replacing mainline cuts by at least holding steady with regional capacity and substituting regional flights from some mainline flights.