Furloughs would have been short lived or nonexistent in 2008 because the retirement numbers would have been huge while the airlines contracted.

That’s the thing people are missing, seems to people who were still doing steep turns on a 172 or in high school back in 2008….it’s not the single event of 65-67. It’s the coupling of that with an economic event. Hell, “Swiss cheese” model if you need it to make sense to a pilot. Life happens when making plans.

Maybe it time for the industry to give a nice kick in the teeth for some to understand this career has never been bourbon and “handies,” it’s a fickle girl who uses teeth.

Yeah and an asteroid might destroy the dominant life forms on the plane too, just ask the dinosaurs. But that wasn’t what some of us were saying that some of you thought “laughable,” What we were saying was:

1. The effect of 65-67 (if it were even to occur) would be substantially less than the effect of 60-65.
2. In the event of an economic downturn management would try to mitigate their furloughs by offering early retirement to the oldest pilots, like they did for COVID.

No one was claiming that there isn’t variability in the prospects of an airline career (or any other) because of even normal variability far less black swan events.

well you were so accurate with your predictions of AA failures and how successful NK will be post Covid.

I don't know whats up with the personal attacks, but I'm going to call the Mods.

Paying large sums to get guys to retire that would have already been legally retired. GENIUS!

Covid caught the airlines by surprise. They didn’t know what to do. It will be furloughs next time, or early out packages.

Explain in detail the difference between “early out” and “early retirement.”
Explain in detail the number of people who WOULD have retired BUT FOR 60-65 and compare that to the number of people who WOULD defer retirement I’d 65-67 happens.
Explain in detail the economic situation in the five years immediately following 60-65 (2007-2011)

https://i.ibb.co/P9ChHZp/IMG-6377.jpg

With what it is now.

I’ll grant that 2007 was a bad time to be an airline pilot, but that’s no reason to squirrel away gold and bury coffee cans full of silver dollars in the backyard like your Depression scarred grandparents did.

One HUGE difference between then and now is that many of those who continued past 60 to 65 when it was lifted were doing so to re-build or actually build their nest egg. The bankruptcies scarred many of those pilots, and that extra 5 years provided them some relief financially.

Absolutely true.

https://i.ibb.co/wMJSdhW/IMG-6380.jpg

autocorrect. Furloughs NOT early out packages.

You cannot compare GDP of the country to this profession but that graph proves that as bad as 2008 was it was really the retirement age change that screwed everyone the most.

If you didn’t live it then you have no idea what it was like. Retirement age increases have effects you cannot put into words. Just watch when it happens. Our minimums will go right back to 4000TT and 1000TPIC when we eventually start hiring again which may take a while. We don’t even have that many retirements but it’s an industry ripple. Attrition will stop. Add in NEO issues, merger, any significant economic slowdown. It’s not going to be fun.