globetruck

Reducing flights doesn’t mean they are permanently parking jets. Some will go into maintenance mods or paint ahead of schedule and some will be redeployed domestically. If you look at the Surplus Reduction Lines (50 hrs of pay to stay at home), you’ll see that there’s a ton of SRLs on the 777 fleet and barely any on the 787. Why? It would seem that the older 777 fleet has more opportunities for maintenance compared to the newer 787 fleet. In this respect it seems that UAL’s management team is quite proactive. On a similar note, I’d be shocked to see UAL dump any 767s simply because the flying will return and there’s no viable 767 replacement aircraft on our books.


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reelbigchair

triples may be just going domestic instead of getting parked. Without all the single and double augmentation even if the plane flew the same hours (impossible) your staffing needs would be much lower.

rvfanatic

What happens with the surplus of pilots if that happens in any airplane? Are seat locks waived so surplus pilots can move to other airplanes?

dera

It's a 4700ft runway. I'm sure it can do it.
They have a nice fly-in every now and then. Could time it with one of those!

GoCats67

The only change so far in the 777 is the number in Maintenance. there are currently 7 in mods for seat changes. 6 for intl Polaris and 1 for domestic cattle car (which was planned long before COVID-19) there are 3 others out for HMV or Paint. There are still 2 more set up for the conversion to cattle car (both 2001 builds) and 4 more waiting for Polaris (1 97 and 3 99 builds). I think at this point UA is trying to make what little lemonade they can out of the Coronavirus lemons by getting maintenance/paint/mods done. It would have to last much longer before they would start making long term fleet decisions of any significance, so any plane that they were planning on having around in 2021 won't be getting retired based on what has happened so far. That logic would cover the entire WB fleet. Maybe retire some narrowbodies a few months earlier than you were planning. IE if you were planning on retiring at the end of the year, maybe you retire now.

DashTrash

Holy overreaction Batman!!! The Company is not going to park jets that were desperately needed prior to COVID-19. This Coronavirus thing is bad, but temporary. Parking jets is not really a temporary solution. We all need to tap the brakes and stop this Chicken Little attitude. We get paid very well to not panic when bad things happen. So we need to stop panicking until there is something to panic about!?!?

Andy

Plan for the worst and hope for the best. Not panic; just discussing what could happen in an economic downturn triggered by the public's reaction to coronavirus. If I were a junior WB FO or NB CA, I would plan my monthly budget on NBFO pay until this threat passes.

UAL T38 Phlyer

The company has not announced the retirement of any 777s, or any other aircraft. They haven’t even announced any hastened retirement of older 757s. As others have said: reduction in utilization. 3/4 full 767 is more profitable than a half-full 777-300. And, there really is no replacement aircraft for a 767-300.

To the OP: the same media brought us this gem out of the MH370 tragedy:

Itsajob

The company is already addressing that issue. We have COLA offers, reduction lines, and we’ll see lower line values until this passes. Our contractual penalties and high attrition make a furlough prohibitively expensive unless the company is absolutely sure that the public reaction to the virus is going to be extreme and long term. Because of this, anything short of an outlook that this will last for several years, shrinking with attrition and possible small displacement bids is a worst case scenario. It’s far less expensive to put some things on hold for now and carry the expense of surplus employees, than to trigger massive training cycles from top end displacements, and the expense of contractual penalties that are triggered if they were to furlough. For now we just keep chugging along since the company needs us in place when the public reaction to this ends. People need to chill. We’re getting beat up pretty bad right now, but we will survive, recover, then get back to the expansion plans that we had.

tommy2times

There will be furloughs! This epidemic will get way worst before it gets better and so much for the pilot shortage outcry.