My three years from now thoughts, a ray of hope for those with none...

[Mainline_or_bust]

In case anyone gives a crap about what I think or maybe someone just needs something to hold on to I opine the following:

Obviously it’s already shaping up to be a drastically different 1/1/21 than 1/1/20 let alone 1/1/19. With a currently reduced amount of regional airlines needed, noting that the current reduction in major flying foremost, ExpressJet might not be the last regional COVID-19 takes.

American for example has three different regionals all wholly owned. Combining two of the three or removing one from existence I surmise is a very legitimate possibility. Envoy being in DFW probably makes that one safe but the other two could definitely be on the table for discussion.

Every airline, regional and major alike (excluding cargo) will be on the ropes for some time. I won’t even speak to what can happen depending on how the CoVid wind blows between now and August of 23’, instead I’ll assume it’s all over vaccinations galore etc.

Scenario: An airline needs more planes to grow, said airline buys planes and hires pilots. To operate those planes flown by those pilots they hire us, obviously.

Question: What happens when there’s a huge amount of retirements and things return to normal?

The Bread and Butter: You’ve seen a reduction and a potential further reduction in regional airlines. I’ve recently read Southwest and Delta are set to retire up to 25% and 33% of their overall staff across basically all departments, including pilots and dispatchers.

If 20% of pilots and dispatchers retire now there probably won’t be any retirements for the next three years. Anyone with a buyout package option, who was planning to go in the next three will almost for sure take it. Likewise there won’t be any new hiring until things are back to steady and any remaining furloughs are called back. There’s potential for a nice sizable gap at the top followed by an ever-increasing gap at the bottom of seniority lists.

On the pilot side if a sizable amount of pilots are relatively close to aging out or retirement, and especially if they are sick of dealing with passengers and CoVid you might see a huge reduction in crews during what’s supposed to be the great pilot shortage of the century.

What that means, I think anyway, is there will be suddenly at some point, probably after it should begin, a massive amount of hiring out of the remaining regionals on the pilot side and the dispatcher side. SkyWest, Republic etc. are going to be absolutely gutted.

For those hired right after the boom the seniority lists are going to be very appealing thanks to the gap. I think that for the first time the pilot shortage will be felt fully at the major level and those zero to hero programs will be logical instead of gimmicky. Load factors will be through the roof, major flying will increase as much as it can and as fast as it can there after and regionals may need to park planes again due to lack of pilots.

So there you have it, darkness for now, darkness for a long while, but once it’s over so much light it’ll hurt to look and you’re going to get one of those eye floaters.

 

[jynxyjoe]

 

[KiloEchoVictor]

Load factors will be through the roof, major flying will increase as much as it can and as fast as it can there after and regionals may need to park planes again due to lack of pilots.

Your optimism is welcomed, and it's true that a mass retirement is going to be inevitable as boomer pilots and DX age out of their jobs, but I am skeptical of a return in demand - People are VERY freaked out by covid. Deaths are going back up, and even though the survival rate is and always was very high, the media loves a good story.

None of that is to say that older people or people with other chronic conditions don't have a legitimate fear, but the general hysteria surrounding this whole thing largely falls on the shoulders of the media in my book. They (the media) have perfectly healthy people scared that they are going to die from something with a 99%+ survival rate, and the public fear of it is so pervasive that every business under the sun is tripping over themselves to shield themselves from liability or any kind of accusation of impropriety.

I personally think it is and always was blown out of proportion, but my view on it doesn't change the paranoia that people feel, or the way the media is fueling it. They love a good story and they absolutely will not let this go. A coronavirus like covid will probably never completely go away, just like the cold and the flu, and as long as there's any trace of it they will continue to publish fear-porn about it.

Market forces will eventually impose reality on all of this, sooner or later, but even when the mass retirement eventually happens, I am skeptical that demand will come roaring back.

 

[Dart_8992]

They (the media) have perfectly healthy people scared that they are going to die from something with a 99%+ survival rate, and the public fear of it is so pervasive that every business under the sun is tripping over themselves to shield themselves from liability or any kind of accusation of impropriety.

I don't really agree with this statement. Maybe if you're someone who spends a lot of time on the internet, I could see how you come to that conclusion, but in the real world, from my experience this isn't the case at all.

Sure people are scared of it, but most people (like myself) are more worried about accidentally bring the virus home to elder parents and grandparents than they are concerned for my their own health. I think that is a perfectly reasonable thing to fear. Who would want to live with knowing they brought a deadly disease home to their vulnerable elders?

With that being said, yes the media does exaggerate it, but I also think that sooner or later, people will just get "bored" of it, and there will be less and less coverage of it on the media. This is already happening. People are looking for a new story to follow because COVID is old news.

Is all of that to say that things will eventually return to normal? Absolutely not. This will be a major turning point for a lot of industries (aviation included). Much like 9/11 brought us (TSA) security theater, only time will tell what COVID does to our industry. Certain aspects of it will never return to normal. A lot of the demand will never return, but my concerns there are less related to the fear of the virus than it is the changes in how business is done on a day to day basis as a result of the changes that have been caused by so many working from home.

 

[paincorp]

Can we stop with the 99% survival rate statement when pure math shows you that is incorrect? Let's also not forget that there are possible life long side effects that doctors are just starting to learn about.

 

[Wonderlic]

The Bread and Butter: You’ve seen a reduction and a potential further reduction in regional airlines. I’ve recently read Southwest and Delta are set to retire up to 25% and 33% of their overall staff across basically all departments, including pilots and dispatchers.

If 20% of pilots and dispatchers retire now there probably won’t be any retirements for the next three years. Anyone with a buyout package option, who was planning to go in the next three will almost for sure take it. Likewise there won’t be any new hiring until things are back to steady and any remaining furloughs are called back. There’s potential for a nice sizable gap at the top followed by an ever-increasing gap at the bottom of seniority lists.

I appreciate the optimism but the SWA numbers are not correct based on a couple of my SWA contacts. Only about 7% of the overall workforce took the early retirement buy out and the percentage of dispatchers specifically was even less than that. In other words, they are looking at mass furloughs in 2021 without a dramatic and unexpected recovery.

 

[KiloEchoVictor]

Can we stop with the 99% survival rate statement when pure math shows you that is incorrect?

Which math is that? I am talking about Infection Fatality Rate, not Case Fatality Rate. They are not the same thing.

 

[jynxyjoe]

Can we stop with the 99% survival rate statement when pure math shows you that is incorrect? Let's also not forget that there are possible life long side effects that doctors are just starting to learn about.

I mean, when the survival rate is higher that .4% i will be happy to stop rounding up. What survival rate would you like me to use?

 

[paincorp]

Which math is that? I am talking about Infection Fatality Rate, not Case Fatality Rate. They are not the same thing.

Yeah, you can frame the numbers however you want, but when you normally talk fatality from something it helps to use those affected by it. If you use vs total population of humans, then nothing would ever be worth worrying about. 0% of people that never flew the 737 Max died, but we still grounded that plane. 0% of people that don't get cancer, die from cancer. 0% of people that die from the flu died from drowning. You can spin the numbers however you want.

If 3% of people that go on airplanes died in an airplane crash, the industry wouldn't exist. And that's using CDC numbers to get the 3.3% of those that get infected.

At the end of the day, we will have lost hundreds of thousands of our citizens to this by the end of the year. I can't imagine any other time we would just shrug off that many people dying as acceptable. That's 8.5 Boeing 737s crashing every day for a year. The airline industry would be done if that happened, but somehow this is no big deal.

Anyways, back to my movie marathon.

 

[CF34-3B1]

Yeah, you can frame the numbers however you want, but when you normally talk fatality from something it helps to use those affected by it. If you use vs total population of humans, then nothing would ever be worth worrying about. 0% of people that never flew the 737 Max died, but we still grounded that plane. 0% of people that don't get cancer, die from cancer. 0% of people that die from the flu died from drowning. You can spin the numbers however you want.

If 3% of people that go on airplanes died in an airplane crash, the industry wouldn't exist. And that's using CDC numbers to get the 3.3% of those that get infected.

At the end of the day, we will have lost hundreds of thousands of our citizens to this by the end of the year. I can't imagine any other time we would just shrug off that many people dying as acceptable. That's 8.5 Boeing 737s crashing every day for a year. The airline industry would be done if that happened, but somehow this is no big deal.

Anyways, back to my movie marathon.

I don’t think you understand the difference between CFR and IFR. The former is deaths from confirmed Infections, the latter is deaths from actual infections. Due to the horrible inconsistencies in testing/reporting, nobody really knows the true number of infections and therefore nobody can really accurately determine the fatality rate but given it is widely accepted that there are more cases out there than “positive test results” are reflecting, one can assume that the fatality rate is not as bad as the media devils are scaring everyone with.

As for the amount of retirements, yeah I think 16 actual dispatchers took early retirement. mass furloughs in 2021 for dispatch if things don’t get better? I’m not so sure on that. Some furloughs, yeah that looks likely. But “Mass” furloughs? depends on what your definition of mass is.

 

[Dart_8992]

nobody really knows the true number of infections and therefore nobody can really accurately determine the fatality rate

How do you say that someone can't accurately determine the fatality/survival rate when literally 2 post ago you made a determination on the rate yourself? You're talking out your ass just as much as anyone else here.

We get it. Nobody knows what the official fatality rate is and we won't know for many years to come. But you can't deny this virus has killed many people and it will kill many more, regardless of how many people it had to infect, it is still killing a lot of people.

People are losing their lives and jobs, but lets continue arguing over what the perceived fatality rate is as if that is somehow going to save peoples careers.

 

[CF34-3B1]

Many businesses have gone to that for the time being but if you look into it closer you’ll find that they are figuring out it just isn’t the same as in person. I think for the short term you’re right, they will work remotely. But it is hard to close the deal on that sale from FaceTime without the schmoozing at the golf course followed by a fancy dinner and drinks afterwards. They’ll make it work for now remotely until there is a treatment or a vaccine but I think they will go back to the in person stuff after we wipe this thing out with a vaccine or turn this into just a cold with some type of treatment, for the most part. We might lose some of the business travel but I don’t think all of it or even a majority of it.

from doing door to door sales at one point in my life, I can assure you closing the deal is much more effective in person than over a phone or a FaceTime type setting. It’s much easier to say no when you don’t have to look at them or when you know you can hang up right afterwards.

so that ^^ was 2 posts ago. Please show me where the a$$ talking fatality rate determination happen

How do you say that someone can't accurately determine the fatality/survival rate when literally 2 post ago you made a determination on the rate yourself? You're talking out your ass just as much as anyone else here.

We get it. Nobody knows what the official fatality rate is and we won't know for many years to come. But you can't deny this virus has killed many people and it will kill many more, regardless of how many people it had to infect, it is still killing a lot of people.

People are losing their lives and jobs, but lets continue arguing over what the perceived fatality rate is as if that is somehow going to save peoples careers.

Oh, and I never said it hasn’t killed people. sooo...

 

[Dart_8992]

so that ^^ was 2 posts ago. Please show me where the a$$ talking fatality rate determination happen

I mistook your post for someone else. My apologies.

Doesn't change my sentiment though that the constant bickering about it in every thread even remotely related to COVID in this forum is helping literally no one.

 

[KiloEchoVictor]

Yeah, you can frame the numbers however you want, but when you normally talk fatality from something it helps to use those affected by it. If you use vs total population of humans, then nothing would ever be worth worrying about. 0% of people that never flew the 737 Max died, but we still grounded that plane. 0% of people that don't get cancer, die from cancer. 0% of people that die from the flu died from drowning. You can spin the numbers however you want.

IFR is a measure of fatalities as a percentage of estimated total infections, not the total population of everyone in the country. That number would be even lower. About 0.04% of the total US population is said to have died with covid-19.

Just to reinforce my point about media hysteria, a recent poll of Americans showed that survey respondents believe that covid-19 has killed 9% (nine percent!) of the US population. That's 225 times the number of actual dead. People's sense of perspective is completely and totally out of whack on this. So the media has obviously been completely irresponsible in their reporting if this is the impression that the public has of the situation.
https://www.kekstcnc.com/media/2793/kekstcnc_research_covid-19_opinion_tracker_wave-4.pdf

I don’t think you understand the difference between CFR and IFR. The former is deaths from confirmed Infections, the latter is deaths from actual infections. Due to the horrible inconsistencies in testing/reporting, nobody really knows the true number of infections and therefore nobody can really accurately determine the fatality rate but given it is widely accepted that there are more cases out there than “positive test results” are reflecting, one can assume that the fatality rate is not as bad as the media devils are scaring everyone with.

The estimates for IFR are based on serology testing, used to estimate the "real" number of infections, whereas CFR is fatalities as a percentage of confirmed cases. CFR is not a good indicator of the true fatality rate because "cases" are only representative of people who got sick enough to require medical care, which is obviously a biased sample, since people who get sick enough to require care are at a higher risk of death from infectious disease to begin with.

IFR is almost always based on estimates because there is never any way to truly know with 100% accuracy how many total infected there are for any given disease - The IFR for influenza is also based on estimates, but that doesn't make it a useless metric. It certainly wouldn't reasonable to say "the flu has a death rate of 10%" based on a CFR of 10%. So based on surveys of how many people get the flu each year, we end up with an IFR of 0.1%, much much lower than the 10% CFR.

It's obvious that the overwhelming majority of people who get the flu do not get sick enough to require ICU, their immune system fights it and they shrug it off. Same with the common cold, and same with covid-19. The main difference is that because covid-19 is a novel virus, it is easy to make a scary sensational story out of it. For the most part, the people dying from covid-19 are the exact same people who would be at risk of dying from the common cold or the flu:
https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Provisional-COVID-19-Death-Counts-by-Sex-Age-and-S/9bhg-hcku

But as CF34 was saying, the way the deaths and infections are being counted is inconsistent to begin with. Many of the deaths being recorded as "covid" deaths are not people who were confirmed to have died of covid, but rather people who died with covid. But one thing is for sure, the death rate is almost certainly not as high as it is being made out to be. Even when the media tells the truth about it,

 

[who'swho]

And here I thought I came here to escape the useless arguing about Covid numbers. Silly me.

 

[KiloEchoVictor]

And here I thought I came here to escape the useless arguing about Covid numbers. Silly me.

I think if it turns out that tens of millions of people lost their jobs for dubious reasons, somebody should probably be held accountable for that.

 

[Dphoenix]

IFR is a measure of fatalities as a percentage of estimated total infections, not the total population of everyone in the country. That number would be even lower. About 0.04% of the total US population is said to have died with covid-19.

Just to reinforce my point about media hysteria, a recent poll of Americans showed that survey respondents believe that covid-19 has killed 9% (nine percent!) of the US population. That's 225 times the number of actual dead. People's sense of perspective is completely and totally out of whack on this. So the media has obviously been completely irresponsible in their reporting if this is the impression that the public has of the situation.
https://www.kekstcnc.com/media/2793/kekstcnc_research_covid-19_opinion_tracker_wave-4.pdf
View attachment 54838

The estimates for IFR are based on serology testing, used to estimate the "real" number of infections, whereas CFR is fatalities as a percentage of confirmed cases. CFR is not a good indicator of the true fatality rate because "cases" are only representative of people who got sick enough to require medical care, which is obviously a biased sample, since people who get sick enough to require care are at a higher risk of death from infectious disease to begin with.

IFR is almost always based on estimates because there is never any way to truly know with 100% accuracy how many total infected there are for any given disease - The IFR for influenza is also based on estimates, but that doesn't make it a useless metric. It certainly wouldn't reasonable to say "the flu has a death rate of 10%" based on a CFR of 10%. So based on surveys of how many people get the flu each year, we end up with an IFR of 0.1%, much much lower than the 10% CFR.

It's obvious that the overwhelming majority of people who get the flu do not get sick enough to require ICU, their immune system fights it and they shrug it off. Same with the common cold, and same with covid-19. The main difference is that because covid-19 is a novel virus, it is easy to make a scary sensational story out of it. For the most part, the people dying from covid-19 are the exact same people who would be at risk of dying from the common cold or the flu:
https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Provisional-COVID-19-Death-Counts-by-Sex-Age-and-S/9bhg-hcku
View attachment 54836

But as CF34 was saying, the way the deaths and infections are being counted is inconsistent to begin with. Many of the deaths being recorded as "covid" deaths are not people who were confirmed to have died of covid, but rather people who died with covid. But one thing is for sure, the death rate is almost certainly not as high as it is being made out to be. Even when the media tells the truth about it,

Well, based on your own CDC table, the COVID19 deaths are over 20x the flu deaths and that's with large swaths of the country on lockdown for a large portion of that timeframe. Additionally, looking at deaths only is... one way of doing things, but I know a pilot in their early 30s that caught it in March that is still having major health issues and might lose their medical. I know a recently retired pilot that was in great shape that it killed very quickly.

Science | AAAS

www.sciencemag.org

There are a lot of "recovered" people testing negative that aren't doing so great. It's a really nasty disease that you do not want to get. I also have had friends, mostly in their 20's and 30s, who have gotten it and had relatively minor symptoms and recovered pretty quickly. So yes that is also the outcome for many, but same as I wear my seatbelt I will take every preventative measure I can reasonably take to avoid getting Covid19.

 

[METARd]

In case anyone gives a crap about what I think or maybe someone just needs something to hold on to I opine the following:

Obviously it’s already shaping up to be a drastically different 1/1/21 than 1/1/20 let alone 1/1/19. With a currently reduced amount of regional airlines needed, noting that the current reduction in major flying foremost, ExpressJet might not be the last regional COVID-19 takes.

American for example has three different regionals all wholly owned. Combining two of the three or removing one from existence I surmise is a very legitimate possibility. Envoy being in DFW probably makes that one safe but the other two could definitely be on the table for discussion.

Every airline, regional and major alike (excluding cargo) will be on the ropes for some time. I won’t even speak to what can happen depending on how the CoVid wind blows between now and August of 23’, instead I’ll assume it’s all over vaccinations galore etc.

Scenario: An airline needs more planes to grow, said airline buys planes and hires pilots. To operate those planes flown by those pilots they hire us, obviously.

Question: What happens when there’s a huge amount of retirements and things return to normal?

The Bread and Butter: You’ve seen a reduction and a potential further reduction in regional airlines. I’ve recently read Southwest and Delta are set to retire up to 25% and 33% of their overall staff across basically all departments, including pilots and dispatchers.

If 20% of pilots and dispatchers retire now there probably won’t be any retirements for the next three years. Anyone with a buyout package option, who was planning to go in the next three will almost for sure take it. Likewise there won’t be any new hiring until things are back to steady and any remaining furloughs are called back. There’s potential for a nice sizable gap at the top followed by an ever-increasing gap at the bottom of seniority lists.

On the pilot side if a sizable amount of pilots are relatively close to aging out or retirement, and especially if they are sick of dealing with passengers and CoVid you might see a huge reduction in crews during what’s supposed to be the great pilot shortage of the century.

What that means, I think anyway, is there will be suddenly at some point, probably after it should begin, a massive amount of hiring out of the remaining regionals on the pilot side and the dispatcher side. SkyWest, Republic etc. are going to be absolutely gutted.

For those hired right after the boom the seniority lists are going to be very appealing thanks to the gap. I think that for the first time the pilot shortage will be felt fully at the major level and those zero to hero programs will be logical instead of gimmicky. Load factors will be through the roof, major flying will increase as much as it can and as fast as it can there after and regionals may need to park planes again due to lack of pilots.

So there you have it, darkness for now, darkness for a long while, but once it’s over so much light it’ll hurt to look and you’re going to get one of those eye floaters.

Thank you for that ray of sunshine. When 300 out of work dispatchers are applying for 4 openings at a regional 2 years from now.

 

[METARd]

We can ramble on and on and on. Present charts. Graphs. What-If scenarios. Here’s the deal, short and simple. If you manage to keep your job, at whatever 121 operation you’re at, for the next few months. Great. If you lose that job, you are going to be competing with hundreds and hundreds of other out of work dispatchers, for a very, very small amount of jobs. You need to be saving your money, coming up with a backup plan, and preparing yourself to be out of a dispatch job for a very, very long time. Once you are on the outside looking in, you are probably not getting back in any time soon. That is the reality. And it sucks. Ramble on and on about Covid and death rates. It doesn’t matter.

 

[KiloEchoVictor]

the COVID19 deaths are over 20x the flu deaths

Now look at flu deaths from last year, and the year before that, and the year before that, and ask yourself what it might mean that there's a bunch of covid deaths and way fewer than the usual flu deaths? Hm. What are the chances that such a large number of flu deaths would just vanish into the ether this year?

That is the reality. And it sucks. Ramble on and on about Covid and death rates. It doesn’t matter.

Yeah, sure, the damage is done, but whatever the truth is about all this definitely matters. 45 million people might be a little angry to learn that they lost their job (or will lose their home soon) because of mass hysteria. Your tune might change if or when you lose your job. Guess we'll find out in October.