I’m afraid that we’re all going to look drastically different by the end of the year. Unless there is a significant recovery by late summer, we could easily furlough 4,000 pilots.

Could they do it? Yes. Would it be easy? Not a chance. The training cycles created by 4,000 furloughs would be staggering.

I get that. It would also take a while to furlough that many, but I do think that we are going to come out of this a smaller airline. The cuts on the regional side will be interesting to watch too, especially given Kirby’s comments. We have a company like Expressjet that is unable provide stock warrants for the CARE act funding, and with no other real assets, finding financing to get through this will be hard. Then there is a company like SkyWest who can provide stock warrants and who own the aircraft that they operate. They will find obtaining financing much less difficult than a company with few assets like ExpressJet.

So when do you think that the bumps will begin?

That's the problem with owning a regional shell company, you will need to carry them or load shed it when times are tough. Interesting times, just like the old Chinese curse.

4000 pilots? Might as well liquidate UAL now.

Just like UAL can only hire so many pilots (about a 1000 a year) that's also about the same rate UAL can furlough pilots. It's pretty simple in concept: UAL will need to displace and train more senior pilots before the most junior ones can be furloughed.

By the time UAL could furlough 4000 pilots (about 3 years assuming a massive early wave followed my max training throughput) another 1500 pilots will retire. So you are really talking about UAL shrinking 5500 pilots.

That's far more than the 30% reduction being talking about this winter and a bigger reduction than anybody is forecasting for next summer, or the two summers after that.

Deep breaths, folks.

Regional airlines are largely outsource providers. I doubt you will see UAL corp. paying the salaries of separate companies. I'm sure United is concerned with only paying the salaries of UAL employees. Just because it says United Express on the side doesn't make them UAL employees.

completely agree Cadet. IMHO the reductions Kirby talks about are Mainline + Express = X

X could be 30% where UAL gets 18% cut per Sniper66 forecasts. But who knows time will tell. Displacing and retraining 4000 downward seems too time consuming and nearly impossible to do unless we let them.

The training center could not handle 4000 furloughs and the corresponding bumps. Add on top the retirements, and 4000 is more like 5500. I could be wrong but that number is over zealous. I'll take the under on that bet.

I don’t see a massive furlough since it would take a long time and be really expensive. If the demand would stay low for a long time, there could be a series of smaller furloughs depending on the outlook. Most analysts think that it will take a few years to get back to where we were a few months ago. I’d expect a displacement bid this summer to have people in place for an initial furlough in October. Don’t know how big, but there are going to be reductions, and we will end up smaller for a while. Then we grow and wait for the next catastrophe.