SO, put 2 and 2 together
and plan on more than 2300 gone in October....simple as that.

Why not wait until they start taking seats out of the planes before we start 'planning' on specific number of furloughs?

They speak 'words' and they do 'deeds'. Words are cheap. Deeds will show you their intentions.

They have some finite decision points when they will be forced to show their hands. Things like furlough notification, fleet retirements, removal of seats from RJs, displacement of PIs from 777 or 757/767 fleets to the 737/320, etc... Someone smarter and more motivated than me can map those out.

Very likely.

It’s also very likely that the company wants to hedge all their bets for maximum flexibility. Nobody, including the company, knows how all this will play out. The company was fine buying brand new 70-seat E175s prior to Covid, so removing seats on the other 175s is pretty low hanging fruit to maintain flexibility. If they make the decision later to furlough more than 2300 it could be too late to start removing seats in time.

It’s also posturing on the part of the company. The labor strategy folks always love using FUD when they want concessions and removing seats is small potatoes compared to some of the stuff they’ve pulled over the years.

HuggyU2,

There is a smarter answer than requiring 6 seats to be pulled off of 76 seat aircraft: Put United Pilots back in the front 2 seats.

United Airlines would rather pull those seats and furlough pilots than let them fly any United's 76 seat aircraft. Insourcing is the smarter answer, pulling the seats and furloughing pilots is the refusal to accept that answer.

SP

I’d love to see that, but if it made financial sense for us to fly 76 seaters rather than farming it out, we’d have hundreds of them running around right now. With all of the associated cost of operating them on the United certificate, farming them out within the limitations of our contract is still cheaper.

Agreed. Frankly, the company may be viewing the “minimal” (Nocella’s word) outlay to pull the seats as a way to buy them a bit more negotiating capital and instill a little fear. The association will be closely monitoring *IF* the mods actually take place. My general assumption is that the company will proceed as Nocella outlined and I feel we should be prepared for the eventuality that management will exercise the full contractual rights they are allowed.

I don't think Nocella's wording means it's a done deal - though in my useless opinion I'd still put it past 50%. It seems more like them saying "yeah we've got a plan in place ready to execute by 1 OCT to remove seats" and they'd be negligent not to have a plan for that. Still 4+ months for things to turn one way or the other.

Itsajob,

So is farming out the 737 and 320 flying for that matter; the company would do that it a heartbeat if we let them.

Itsajob we traded away for promises not kept.

SP

Article is poorly titled and misleading - no official decision has been announced on this (but I'd bet on it happening). From the article:
In the meantime we can expect United to remove seats from regional jets to comply with their pilots contract as they move to furlough large numbers of employees effective October 1.

No duh. They're making plans to remove 6 seats. That is one row of coach seats.

The seats are all on a track system. It's probably not that hard to remove one row of seats and move the rest of the coach seats to give a bit more legroom.

1.5 rows fwiw