AA parking half their fleet as well.

Meanwhile, at my credit card company with airplanes, they haven't canceled any flights so guys are taking it into their own hands. It's getting ugly. From a management update last night:

The flight schedule has not been significantly reduced yet, and every time we cancel a flight with short notice for any reason it is extremely costly, disruptive to the operation and stressful on our guests and coworkers. As of this writing, we have canceled 29 flights due to pilot staffing in the last four days.
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upup89 said:
Airports are almost going to be ghost towns the next few months. At what point does every airline shutting everything down for a shorter period of time become less costly than dragging this out?
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Lufthansa Group has gone that route (with a few exceptions) has have a few other European carriers. Nobody in the US is going to want to be the first to blink and give up market share, even if there isn't actually any market right now.
 
upup89 said:
Airports are almost going to be ghost towns the next few months. At what point does every airline shutting everything down for a shorter period of time become less costly than dragging this out?
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Agreed. Lots of money being spent to operate a very reduced fleet. I feel like furloughs are inevitable at this point (for most (?) workgroups) so why not stop the money bleed now until we get further down the road on this?

I guess the counter-argument is that no one knows how long this will drag out so why stop when this could be turning around by May?

Interesting times.
 
DogwoodLynx said:
Agreed. Lots of money being spent to operate a very reduced fleet. I feel like furloughs are inevitable at this point (for most (?) workgroups) so why not stop the money bleed now until we get further down the road on this?

I guess the counter-argument is that no one knows how long this will drag out so why stop when this could be turning around by May?

Interesting times.
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From most airlines I’ve seen with mixed fleet, furlough isn’t the route they want to go because it would then create a massive training backlog. Everyone is banking on this being short term, meaning less than a year, so low hour months and leaves are the way they are going.
 
BobDDuck said:
Lufthansa Group has gone that route (with a few exceptions) has have a few other European carriers. Nobody in the US is going to want to be the first to blink and give up market share, even if there isn't actually any market right now.
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Didn’t the German government shut down the airspace first of did Lufthansa park the fleet first?
 
I haven't been in the industry long enough to see a furlough. Do they furlough a percentage of FOs and CAs, or just start from the bottom of the seniority list and go up? Wouldn't that create a big imbalance and cause training costs if they downgrade people?
 
thevideographer said:
I haven't been in the industry long enough to see a furlough. Do they furlough a percentage of FOs and CAs, or just start from the bottom of the seniority list and go up? Wouldn't that create a big imbalance and cause training costs if they downgrade people?
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The later.
That's why you don't see companies doing that left and right.

Another question is how do you do retraining with less than 10 ppl in a room
 
thevideographer said:
I haven't been in the industry long enough to see a furlough. Do they furlough a percentage of FOs and CAs, or just start from the bottom of the seniority list and go up? Wouldn't that create a big imbalance and cause training costs if they downgrade people?
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Inverse seniority order. Easy to do at single fleet airlines. Less practical at places that have multiple fleet types.
 
I wonder how the FFD, Contract, carriers deal with this. Since they are under contract are they to keep flying empty airplanes and carry on business as usual?
 
BEEF SUPREME said:
Wait what? Are people just not flying trips now?
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Yeah it appears that way. The company has been very slow to respond and only talked about offering leaves and canceling flights but hasn't done it yet. Seeing as they've put all their eggs in the SEA basket and it's the epicenter of the pandemic here, we're gonna have a tough road ahead weathering this. Also with San Fransisco and Los Angeles locked down too it compounds things.
 
Skåning said:
Meanwhile, at my credit card company with airplanes, they haven't canceled any flights so guys are taking it into their own hands. It's getting ugly. From a management update last night:
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What do you mean guys are taking it into their own hands? You are either sick, unfit for duty, or taking care of children at home due to school closure, or you come to work and fly. Pilots don't get to pick flights to cancel. Sick calls have increased because the company has allowed anyone with kids now home because of a school closure to call in sick and use sick bank time. I'm not sure why anyone is looking forward to cancelled flights and flight reductions but if that is what you desire, just wait until April and May numbers are finalized. Mainline legacy carriers are parking 70% capacity, how do you think AS will do?

I don't think AS has been slow to respond. They have reacted fairly quickly and have reached out to lines of credits before the big 3 did (from what I heard). They just haven't said anything beyond 10% cut for April and 15% for May but a gut feeling says these numbers will be far worse.
 
Kingairer said:
I wonder how the FFD, Contract, carriers deal with this. Since they are under contract are they to keep flying empty airplanes and carry on business as usual?
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If I understand this correctly, until the code share customer tells us to cancel. That way we get paid for the flight. Had two legs yesterday that weren't terrible, 23/76 and 28/76, on that route EWR-MUHA, they are usually close to full. I've seen some random cancellations where I guess the code share partner is trying to save the fuel cost.

Next month all three majors have GREATLY reduced the flights that they are having us do.
 
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