What kind of furlough protections do other airlines have regarding their regional fleet? The United contract has language where if they furlough back to January 2016 all 76 seat jets have to be reconfigured to 70 seats and any company flying 70 seat jets has to hire United furloughed pilots at 2nd year pay. The hiring part may not be applicable for a while if they are furloughing too.

I started Indoc last week and my name is on the seniority list.

my name was on the senority list the day I reported for class a few years ago

Where exactly in the contract does it say that? And do you think SkyWest(non union), not owned in any part by United would have to hire someone from another company because the other company’s contract says so?

He might be referring to “Jets for Jobs” from the bankruptcy days. Don’t think it’s a thing anymore but I’m not entirely sure

It was done before, mutually agreed upon as part of the jets-jobs contract. Not sure if that’s still in place as almost all those CRJ 700 are gone. Probably moot anyway at this point.

it is a thing in the UA ALPA contract.

Yes, and presumably UA has some mechanism to enforce it on UAX, probably in the FFD contract or worst case extortion.

Yeah I remember something along those lines, not on the list until released from IOE. So maybe they can technically call it a "not furlough".

SkyWest is offering voluntary leave now.

I’m glad my last trip included Jackson Hole. What a magical, gorgeous place. I’m 70% company seniority. There’s no way I survive this. Never had a bad day at SkyWest. Loved every minute and loved flying the ERJ. Really good crews there. Good luck to everyone.

It’s a clause in the United pilot contract along with a supporting LOA. It is not jets for jobs like in the past. Any furloughed United pilot hired by a regional would be just like any other new hire, except they would start at second year pay. The way the contract reads, if United furloughs beyond that date, regardless of union status or who owns the metal, any regional jet that says United on the side has to be reconfigured to 70 seats, and they have to hire furloughed United pilots. I don’t know that the hiring United furloughed pilots will be an issue if the regional furloughs as well, but if that regional recalled and needed to hire, they would have to hire the furloughed United pilots. To clarify your question about SkyWest having to hire pilots from another company because their contract says so, the answer is yes. The United pilots made an agreement with the parent company who owns the flying, not those who fly the route. I’m sure that this provision is in the contractual agreement between United and SkyWest for flying done on behalf of United.

We in the airline industry have had one heck of a good run over the past 8 years since hiring resumed after the '08-'11 recession. I suppose we all knew it couldn't last -- nothing ever does -- but not even the most pessimistic doomsday predictions could have anticipated something like this.

For all its flaws, Skywest was still a good place to work with great crews, camaraderie, and interesting flying. If any regional is left standing after all this, it'll be Skywest. It might be a 500-pilot airline, though.

No matter what happens, I wouldn't trade my 5+ years flying the ol' Climb-Restricted-Jet for anything.

Then again, you never know. That Chinese bioweapon lab that some believe created this virus could finally fess up, and admit they have the antidote, too. Then we'll all be back to complaining about our 95-hour lines. (Oh, how I wish that could happen.)

Blue skies and tailwinds, all.

So, skywest would bring back all its furloughed pilots first and if they needed to hire it would be furloughed United pilots. Correct?

Yep. Furloughed pilots from an airline are already on their list. New hires would come after that. I doubt that many would take the deal if offered. They aren’t building a resume anymore and regional F/O pay is so low they can make more money doing something outside of aviation.

The enforcement mechanism is language that says if any carrier does not comply with the requirement to hire furloughed United pilots, they may not operate 70 or 76 seat aircraft for United.

I bet they would. I'd rather make less money doing what I loved than more money flying a desk.

Many of those who we’ve hired spent the lost decade stuck at a regional. Going back to the right seat wouldn’t be doing something that they love. Those guys really paid some dues and they’re more interested in money at this point.

Hiring Freeze is in effect as of today.

Just got an email saying all new hire training classes are delayed until further notice. I had a tentative class date of June 8th.

And no pay for everyone that was in training... we all got locked out of KCM and “unpaid administrative leave” pasted to our sched+ calendars

SkyWest is in preservation mode. And they want to use its strengths to be ready for the long haul.. Last call they had 520 million in cash. Not a lot of “tail risk” (contract vs aircraft ownership liability) they want to come out the other side of this stronger. Thats the plan. . They think this Is maybe a 1.5-2 year event... to give you perspective Mesa had 57mill last quarter in cash... Financial strength will be key... So ya. The next 6months, 1 year , 2 yeas...???.. will suck. But hang in there. The industry will look drastically different in 2 years..

I always read your comments and you seem like a seasoned pilot.
If you had to make a wild guess, how many pilot could get laid off with this event?. I'm talking about skywest, not the rest.
Are we talking hundreds? Maybe thousands?. I barely have 800 junior to me and I have no idea what to expect.

have Zero idea.. hopefully ZERO!!. But as they say. This seems worse then 9/11.. My take. It all depends on the next 90 days....

I bet many of us who can afford an unpaid leave will take it. But I doubt that alone will prevent furloughs.

Anyone buying company stock? Chip just bought $500,000 worth.

Have friend who was cut loose today after 2 months into training up in Denver.

“cut loose”... or told to “go home”.... ?? Lots of spin on verbiage right now.. Cut loose means turn in your badge, manuals, KCM badge ect... Go home means, keep studying, will be in touch when will be spinning training back up...

And to be fair. No one knows the answer. Not even the training managers.. Unprecedented times..

Having 90 days would be a luxury right now, enough time to find something else. But with these type of late evening communications, it seems like you can let go just anytime. But hey, it is what it is, and we have to be optimistic.

Well, I was part of a CRJ class yesterday. We were scheduled to do our ground validation this morning. Yesterday morning we did matrix, in the afternoon we got epaulets, walked out to the hangar and took a class picture, finished the GV review for the test...
...and then we were told to stand by.
D.V., the CRJ fleet training manager came in and had the unfortunate job of letting us all know that training was halted as of that moment. The training folks were obviously stuck between a rock and a hard place. Keep moving forward until you're told to stop. I totally get it and considering the circumstances they are doing everything they can. Lot's of questions, many that didn't have ready answers, were asked. The upshot was "We don't know how long this will last, but you'll be called back by seniority number when we resume."
Unfortunately, even though we were one testing event away from completing the ground phase, we can expect to start at the beginning of Indoc again if/when called back.
We had not received our KCM or SKYW badges at that point, I think that was going to happen today. We were asked to turn in our Company equipment, or if you wanted to bail immediately they would send you a shipping label. I believe training pay was supposed to go through yesterday.
Definitely a huge kick in the jimmy, but it didn't come a big surprise either.

We'll just have to see where it all ends up, I surely don't know.

Apparently I’m on “go home status” then, still have all CO materials, and no emails demanding the back. Deep into sim training.

We will see how much crazier it will get.

“Unpaid Administrative Leave” = Furlough?

I'm gonna venture a guess of 50 percent of the pilot group. As horrible as that sounds, it's in line with the schedule cuts happening at mainline.

When I joined OO we had 3300 pilots. I'd be surprised if we keep that many :(

That would really suck. Like... back to my forklift life lol. Oh well

I know dude. It's awful.

In my other life outside SKW, I run a 40 person company that I founded 7 years ago. We're just about to let at least 20 of our people go. It will be the single worst day of my life.

I'll take as long of an unpaid leave as I can from SKW. So at least there'll be one guy keeping a paycheck, as I won't be taking one. Also cutting my own pay at my company to $0, to help keep as many people as we can.

All because a bunch of $#@&+!! idiots just have to eat wild animals. Let's face it, if you've traveled a lot in Asia (I've spent a couple years of my life all over it), you'll know that if there was *one* place that some disgusting virus was gonna jump from animals to humans, a wet market in China would be pretty much the top of the list.

thats essentially the definition of a furlough right? In that case, this is history in the making.

Furloughing half the pilot group would be very much not in their interests unless things got dramatically worse - which I accept could of course happen.

The cost involved of recalling and retraining that many pilots in a possible short period of time would be utterly staggering, even over a not so short period it will cost a absolute fortune to do. I have no doubt there will be some furloughs at some stage, but hopefully with the mix of unpaid leave takers (Plus I know a number of senior captains who are going to retire early due to this) reduced credit lines, A LOT of cash on hand and cheap oil among other factors will offset the number they would need to look at.

From the numbers I’ve crunched and including all trainees already sent home which was quite a few, my estimate was around 18 to 25% at the most at this stage, I don’t have access to nearly a fraction of the data management uses to figure these things out however. I truly hope it’s zero percent though.

I'm so sorry. That truly sucks. Just painful to hear -- and the collapse of our global economy has only just begun. :(

I really, really hope you're right. However, judging by the macroeconomic trends we're seeing, this is going to be worse than 9-11 and 2008 combined, by quite a wide margin. I did my first master's degree in economics and the trends we're seeing now could easily eclipse the Great Depression.

The only thing that will stop a virtual collapse of the global economy is a vaccine, a miracle cure. Nothing else will restore investor sentiment, or get people back out on the streets and into airplanes, bars, restaurants, and stores.

In the meantime, all the federal governments of the world, combined, do not have the fiscal power to literally cover trillions and trillions of dollars in wages. Not without running deficits so large that they need to effectively print money, leading to hyperinflation like we saw in Weimar-era Germany and in some underdeveloped countries more recently. If that happens, cash isn't safe, and nothing you own holds its value. Then all bets are off, and seniority lists will be the least of our concerns.

The Deutsche Bank team got it right today when they stated that the events of the past few weeks are so extreme, that they cannot issue accurate predictions based on any historical data. Because we've never seen a paralysis of entire economies. Entire sectors, sure -- like the airlines after 9-11 or the mortgage industry in 2008. But not entire cities, states, and countries.

We are about to live through an era that history books will remember. A hundred years from now, they will talk of the Great Crash of '20. Unless someone finds a cure, really, really fast. Here's hoping.

^^^ This ^^^ I have a BS in Economics and agree with everything he said.

That’s was my understanding. We got sent got furloughed and sent home. Even tho the company isn’t calling it furloughed. Just glad they paid for our tickets cause we can’t jumpseat or standby anymore