I interviewed and was put in the pool before Covid. Last I heard they're still mostly on track for certification. With FAA working at home things have slowed down a bit but they're still pushing for fall.

What's your experience level if you don't mind me asking?

4600TT 1300TPIC. Also all TPIC was E175 which they were looking for since they're launching with E190

You’re forgetting the fact the big 3 will be significantly smaller on the other side of this. Someone will be there to take advantage.

i didn’t say they wouldn’t. If you followed my other posts, I think the legacies will be hurt fairly badly if international flying doesn’t rebound quickly, even (and perhaps especially) if domestic does. Too many fleet types and too much seniority in the international wide-body equipment will turn furloughing the junior people into an atrociously expensive training cascade for those not furloughed. And clearly, F9 and NK can also benefit from the used aircraft market, dumping (Or at least renegotiating downward) leases on older 319/320/321 CEOs and picking up slightly used NEOs to replace them. And - like Breeze - they too will benefit from cheap fuel, unused gates, and a plethora of easy to recruit pilots out there.

But Breeze is still going to have an advantage in lower employee costs - at least initially - because literally EVERYBODY will be a newbie on year one of the salary schedule while - even if NK and F9 don’t wind up furloughing they still both have people onboard who have been there long enough to work their way up the payscale. Even so, if you look at the furloughing that AA and UAL will have to do if international flying doesn’t come back promptly, they well might wind up with no one avoiding furlough who ISN’T At year 12 on longevity.

but yeah, I imagine right now the Big Three CEOs are having nightmares about NK and F9 and Breeze and SWA siphoning off domestic market share while they are still having to type rate 777 and 787 pilots and FOs (Many whose last previous type rating was a 727) into their narrow body domestic fleet.

And probably their very WORST nightmare would be an NK F9 merger with all future orders converted to 321Neo XLR so they could steal market share domestically AND internationally.

But since it was a Breeze thread, I didn’t really go into that in my previous posting...

Breeze also planned on zero revenue during their current startup timeframe. In other words, they aren’t losing any money now due to covid that they didn’t plan to lose already, whereas every other airline (incl NK/F9) is losing billions with parked and/or empty planes and idle pilots with no revenue coming in, and amassing huge debt, which will cost money to service (raising their overall costs down the road). Besides the handful of initial cadre and DECs on year 3/2 pay, as stated above, everyone will be on year 1 pay. And the pay scales/401k are hot garbage. Barely higher than regional pay scales. E195 pay a little over half of JB E190 pay, and A220 pay a little over half of JB A220 pay when you factor in 401k. And...now they have thousands of apps on file (even pre-covid they had a ton). So there is no pressure to raise the pay now, or worry about turnover for guys going to legacies (saving training costs). One guy I know in the pool there was planning on bouncing to any of the big 3/SWA/AS/B6/G4 even if he had a single or low digit seniority number at Breeze. Not anymore. Even if he wanted to leave, doubtful anyone will be hiring in the next couple years. I’m sure he isn’t the only one, so Breeze dodged a huge bullet there. Whereas it was going to be a stepping stone, even with the allure of getting in on the ground floor, now it’s not...at least for a couple/few years.



Also, as a startup, they can build their systems from the ground up, which enables a lot more efficiency. I’m also guessing they can negotiate a lot of things at a discount right now, between lease/finance rates, contract employees, GSE, etc.



Taking a look at the allegiant thread, they are in contraction mode. Breeze’s network guy came from there, so I have to think he will be able to capitalize on that, as well as newfound availability to access some other gates/slots that wouldn’t have otherwise been available. Before, Breeze said they weren’t going to fly any routes that had competition (largely knowing that the Goliaths like delta would lose money to bleed them out if they did). But now every airline is in survival mode, so there likely won’t be much of a competitive response against Breeze. No one can afford to do it. So perhaps they don’t just go for allegiant style routes now...and maybe they won’t avoid competition as hard as they were before.



Minus not selling his stake in TAP when he was trying to and subsequently losing his a$$ with a margin call, by sheer luck Neeleman’s timing is perfect here, assuming demand comes back and he’s able to hit markets that work. He will have a tremendous cost advantage with dirt cheap E195 leases from Azul, cheap pilots, cheap fuel, cheap everything really, probably a good onboard product, pilots and FAs just happy to have a job with a fun startup culture, as well as having charter flights (unless college sports stop next year) securing revenue even if leisure demand is still down when they launch.



Just as the post-9/11 times with hurting legacies allowed JB to grow and access a lot of prime markets, I think this virus has enabled a very rare jetblue 2.0 type of opportunity.

It looks like Parker is betting that the dramatic pullback by both UAL and DAL will open market share to AA and make the retaining of an extra 1,000 plus pilots over the winter be worthwhile.... plus there will likely be endless AA advertisements how they didn't furlough anybody like everybody else... "the company that cares," ya can almost hear the background music now....

If they keep offering LOAs we won’t be fat pilots at all next year. May & June over 5000 pilots are only making 55 hr voluntarily

He seems to be going out on a limb... if things pick up, he wins. If they don't it was probably BK anyway.

Excellent summation.

Gup