Here is what was said..... A question was asked by an employee from IAD airport ops saying that Delta is retiring their 756 fleet. It was asked if United is considering retiring the most inefficient airplanes and if we return as a smaller airline, what will that look like. Scott Kirby then talks for a while about wanting to maintain flexibility since the outcome is unknown. If the demand rapidly recovers, United will be able to rapidly recover with it. He then talks about slow recovery. He said that if demand remains depressed with a 30% reduction for a long term, the 756 fleet would be the first to go, followed by the Airbus. The eventual Max deliveries would be replacements rather than planned growth. He then said that hopefully things won’t be worst case and that they keep the Airbus and use the max for growth as originally planned. He then says that on the regional side, “my guess is that the 50 seaters will be mostly gone by the end of this. Under almost any of these scenarios 50 seat flying will be a thing of the past”. Oscar Munoz then says “there are probably some smiles around virtual land right now with that statement.” At this point they go to the next question.

Saying that in almost any recovery scenario that 50 seat flying will be a thing of the past is hard to take out of context. There has been a couple of news articles mentioning the elimination of 50 seat flying when reporting on the content of the town hall, and the company has yet to come out and correct them saying that the statement was taken out of context. It appears to me that 50 seat flying is going to be a thing of the past when we recover from this.

 

That’s what I saw. Let’s all just hope we recover and have internal options.

It’s not really fun to read dudes bashing regional guys nonstop btw. Trolls, hammer away for sure. Most of our pilot feed is regional and I’m sure that will be the same in the future.

I just did new fleet training with a great dude from Skywest.

I also wish our flight attendants were better looking.

Future furlough retired fighter guy. There is no mafia.

 

another important “factoid” is that the company filed a 8-K with rage SEC saying that it expects demand to be down by 30% at the end of the year.

it seems to me that 30% is the base case and not worst case any more.

 

I didn't watch your townhall, so Not sure what your IAD OPS guy is referring to as 2/3 of Delta's 756 fleet just were remodeled and actually have some of the newest interiors of the company. They are still flying even during this temp parking program and are probably going to be one of the primary LHR aircraft as the routes reopen.

 

He probably got Delta confused with American. They’re the only ones who have announced the retirement of aircraft, Delta and United are just storing a bunch of everything at this point.

 

Yup, 30% is certainly within the range of potential outcomes for December 2020.

However, it's a SEC filing so the company has a vested interest to error on the side of conservative. It's hard to get sued if things perform better than forecast and the original dire forecast was reasonable.

Anybody looking at furlough numbers, however, needs to keep an eye on the forecast for summer 2021. That's the number that will drive staffing decisions for the next 12 months.

 

Just on CNBC. Jamie Baker, JPMorgan senior airline analyst, is calling for recovery to 2019 to be in 2023. He's calling 2021 to be down 20-25%.

With the above numbers, my new guess is that we're 'only' looking at a 10-20% furloughing of the seniority list with the numbers favoring less furloughs rather than more.

 

Mr Baker was extremely bullish on United in the CNBC video.......not so much on American

 

He was also very negative on LCCs.
I haven't done a deep dive into airline 10Q/Ks in a while so I'll defer to him on which airline's in the best shape coming out of this.

 

I'm sure there's no bias because of their "internal walls" between divisions but isn't JP Morgan, as in JP Morgan Chase, UAL's banker, UAL's largest creditor, UAL's credit card processor, and UAL's largest customer (miles via the UAL credit card)?

The relationship between UAL and JP Morgan Chase is deep and wide.