What if this is as good as it gets? What happens if 500k-750k pax/day is where things stay until widespread vaccination?

Best case - cares extension. Worst case - massive industry shakeup.

is someone positioned to ride that out (ie hunger games) or is it just gonna be luck (musical chairs)

It’s typical survivor at this point. Outwit, Outplay, Outlast. I see each of the big 3 playing one aspect of each more than the others.

AA - out play
UA - out wit
DL - out last

Coat tail riders - Alaska, jet blue

Ultimate stealth players - SWA, Spirit

Under the radar - Allegiant, Sun Country

Winning all the challenges on the other tribe - Cargo.

Nothing stealth about SWA anymore. They flat out said they are trying for market share. They have two years of funding at today’s snapshot.

Sounds like they’re in great shape then I read passenger count has to triple or massive furloughs.

Like I said. Stealth player. Pretend to be underdog but control the game.

I think the industry will contract by about 40-50% overall. Some airlines will get bigger. Others will shrink massively or perhaps disappear altogether.

You think that is 40-50% overall number of pilots? Or number of airlines (including the regional airlines)?

Like to hear what your crystal ball is for both.

Depends entirely on a vaccine now (or some miracle treatment that everyone can keep in their medicine cabinet and pop like aspirin anytime they feel a touch of the Rona coming on).

Otherwise there's no plan and no metric for restoration of normalcy in certain key economic states other than "no deaths"... my guv has essentially stated that one death is too many. No practical way to get there, could literally take decades of partial lockdown to achieve any kind of herd immunity. Or go for total lockdown where anyone leaving their home for for any reason (including food, water, or medical care) is shot on sight, kind of like what they did in wuhan. That would eliminate the bug in a matter of weeks but only in areas where a total lockdown was totally enforced. Chinese citizens are well trained in absolute compliance by decades of gulag therapy, but here you'd have to shoot people.

From a public health management perspective it's basically like telling everyone to stay home because 50,000 annual highway deaths is too much. If traffic deaths start to rise, back to lockdown you go. Rinse, wash, repeat.