I've heard some mixed information about how often X or Y airline would furlough, ranging from "this airline hasn't furloughed or cut pay in 60 years", to "always save 2 years pay because everybody gets furloughed 2-4 times in their careers". The only consistency I've seen is that regionals and cargo (including the 2 big ones) tend to be more sensitive to economic downturns than major passenger airlines.

I know things are good right now, but it's probably a worthwhile consideration for new pilots when choosing a place to spend the rest of your career.

Perhaps this is something that the senior pilots would know a lot about? Did any airline escape 2008 or 2020 unscathed? Or were a good chunk of people furloughed and never brought back?

Thanks!

The legacies tend to furlough with economic cycles. Some smaller shops did not, including a few regionals.

Everyone furloughed this century has been invited back, except where airlines liquidated.

The last 40 years of airline history has been defined by one-off events and the time taken to process them.

The primary one was deregulation. There were a large number of airlines that ran low-volume, high-margin businesses and were let loose to free market competition in the early 80's. That's when Braniff and Easter and Pan Am and the like liquidated. Those pilots weren't furloughed, they were fired. Their companies ceased to exist.

The remaining "Big 7" (American, United, Continental, TWA, USAir, Northwest and Delta) bounced around for a few years until 9/11 was the last straw. Airlines at this point were still running pretty much the old model competing on service and not price. Example: food was served in coach on most domestic flights over an hour. First class meals on a BNA-DCA leg might have been steak. They went through a round of bankruptcies and retired a lot of 3 pilot aircraft generating a lot of furloughs. Mutliple mergers ensued.

Then a few years later you had age 65 and the great recession - more furloughs.

The US airline industry is now heavily consolidated, runs with very high load factors, and has very little fat in domestic operations. None of the furlough causes in the past are likely to recur. If people furlough again, it will be new black swans - climate change, autonomous airplanes, nuclear war, whatever. Really really hard to predict. But I think the 1990-2010 timeline that the old guys tell stories about is likely to be an aberration.

Economic disaster is always a possibility.

Yes, this is probably accurate-ish today, I don't think most carriers will just up and trim 20% anytime the stock market drops a few points.

But most of us thought that our first black swan was an aberration and would be our last... most of us know better now. Although the frequency of black swans is hard to predict I'd be surprised if we went more than 15-20 years without one.

It may not take a nuclear war, even a big dust-up between near-peers would probably have an impact.

If it’s the typical economic cycle, there may not be furloughs this time. The staffing struggles after Covid and difficulty of replacing those pilots may encourage mgmt to wait things out.

-Mortgage defaults higher than 2008
-Blackrock has set aside $30b to buy foreclosures in the coming recession
-30% auto loans 90 days delinquent
-1 in 7 30 days delinquent
-40m people now having to repay student loans at $504 average
-CRE defaults at all-time high
-40% of office space vacant
-$1t CRE due refinancing in 12 mos
-$2.7t due refinancing by ‘27
-CRE equity lower and rates higher and not solvent enough to refi
-$1t in credit card debt
-$500m in maxed out cards
-record high savings now depleted
​​​​​​-record high early withdrawals from 401k/IRÁ to pay bills
-record hi refis to pay living expenses
-$120k/yr needed to afford the average home, that’s only 8% of workers
-the March bank failures had more assets than all of 2008
-700 banks have been notified that they may be closed (Jerome Powell last fall)
-in 1 quarter a trucking recession has started and may have been laid off (I follow this closely since trucking WAS going to be my back up)
-advance airline ticket sales are declining, we’re planning a February trip and prices have fallen 20% in two weeks without discounts
-Airbnb has collapsed and is now focusing on long-term rentals such as “roommates”

-​​​​​​etc,etc


Who knows how resilient the economy is and what will happen when it reacts.

There's no certainties in this biz. There will be furloughs, there will be bankruptcies, there will be mergers where one side gets the screw job. There's also pilots who go from zero hours to major airline widebody international captains. Guessing who/when/how is a fool's game.

Roll the dice and remember the old saw:

Keep your first house, first wife (make sure she thinks you only get paid once a month) and always have a Plan B for income.

OOOOOR get rid of the crappy house early, and get rid of the wife early.... Live a life of traveling the world and have fun. Going with plan B here.

The only constant is change. If this is what keeps you up at night you are in for a lot of sleepless nights.