Furlough Estimates

Southwest CEO Gary Kelly said a few days ago that business needs to double just to break even.
I apologize Im not familiar with the quote. Is he saying business needs to double or passengers need to double? In other words, does the revenue need to double or does he mean the passenger side as its own revenue stream needs to double to be viable.
 
Gary Kelly was interviewed by the Dallas Morning News the other day, here is a quote from him

“If things don’t improve, this just can’t continue. We can’t lose the kind of cash we lost in the second quarter, for quarter upon quarter upon quarter. We’d be out of business. A lot depends on how the revenue environment improves. That’s front and center of why we are announcing Miami and Palm Springs because it will help chip away at that revenue deficiency.”

Here is the whole article


He has said that line about business needing to double to break even several times this past summer. I assume he means revenue, which would mean passengers. But they’ve also indicated that even filling up the airplanes right now would barely break even since the fares are so low.

From everything that the company and SWAPA have said regarding staffing and how overmanned we still are with pilots is this. When the awards for VSP/ExTO closed they were in good shape, then network planning cut the September schedule again and put them about 1500 pilots overstaffed still. I found a chart that was pre schedule cut showing 2800 flights a day that SWAPA had put out. So after the schedule cut they are running just over 1900 a day so that is the difference to make up to have the schedule align with the current reduced headcount.

As of right now they keep saying that they plan in 30-60-90 days out and that matches with how they publish a full schedule, they still show over 3000 flights a day starting in November and 4000/day by March.

Speculation here, but I think that at some point in the 1st quarter they are going to have to come up with a longer term staffing plan that aligns better with demand depending on the status of a vaccine and treatments. What they do at that point I don’t know, they’ve said the next step will be some kind of concessions before furloughs so I would assume that would be the ask.
 
Ugh... furloughing for the first time in the midst of their 50th anniversary celebration? Bad optics.


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Ugh... furloughing for the first time in the midst of their 50th anniversary celebration? Bad optics.


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Compared to the optics of not being a viable business anymore?

Just so I am not attacked for being a doomer, we did hit over 900K in a day for the first day since March. My prediction of October and a million PAX is looking likely for now.
 
Ugh... furloughing for the first time in the midst of their 50th anniversary celebration? Bad optics.


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I given a lot of thought to this. I think they are being my pretty honest about doing everything possible to avoid furloughs. I mean look at how much cool aide they spew around here, if they make it through this with no job losses they will 10x that stuff for the 50th anniversary.

That being said if they have to cut jobs to keep the place from bankruptcy I’m pretty sure they will. I mean what’s the point of saving a few jobs if in the end the whole place goes under. Not that I think that is going to happen by the way.
 
That being said if they have to cut jobs to keep the place from bankruptcy I’m pretty sure they will. I mean what’s the point of saving a few jobs if in the end the whole place goes under. Not that I think that is going to happen by the way.
Airlines don't do the "every ten years, bet the company" thing.

Perhaps they should and perhaps right now, in trying to figure out if, when, and how the recovery goes is that bet.
 
From what I've seen, SWA based their recovery forecast on being an LCC and owning the leisure market. Thsr worked for them in 2001 and in 2008, but since then Frontier and Spirit have filled that market, and Southwest has moved a bunch into the business market. I think that's one of the reasons they had the most aggressive recovery plans originally. It allowed them to pay more to avoid furloughs because the time frame to full ops looked shorter. That of course changed when they realized they don't own the pure lcc market any more and increased their schedule cuts. That changed the timeline to full ops and makes our much harder to keep paying out extra to prevent furloughs.
 
So baseline bike for that I'd get would be this or similar.


It's not going to break the bank but it is nice enough to keep you motivated to ride it. It's safe with disk brakes. The parts are nice enough to not need immediate replacement.

I also sent you a PM

I was looking to add another bike, I wanted something more upright than the bikes I have. Rode a FX-4 ended up with a Townie Path 9D.
 
First born child, kill all the puppies in your neighborhood, sacrifice grandma to volcano, 24 hour notification for reserve assignment, atomic wedgie for each month you stay employeed after nov

Soooo like...I think there’s going to be a pretty good take rate.


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1) Reduced Regular Line - lines built to +/- 7.5 hrs of 80% of the ALV, no lower than 52 hrs
2) Monthly Blank Lines - 25 hr guarantee, able to white slip (pick up open time)
3) Ultra Long Call Reserve - 80% of reserve guarantee, 24 hour call out, one fewer reserve on call day per month
4) Continuous 12 Month Blank Line - 35 hr guarantee, able to white slip, committed for a 12 month period

All voluntary. Company gets to determine how many of each type of line to award in each category each month.
 
1) Reduced Regular Line - lines built to +/- 7.5 hrs of 80% of the ALV, no lower than 52 hrs
2) Monthly Blank Lines - 25 hr guarantee, able to white slip (pick up open time)
3) Ultra Long Call Reserve - 80% of reserve guarantee, 24 hour call out, one fewer reserve on call day per month
4) Continuous 12 Month Blank Line - 35 hr guarantee, able to white slip, committed for a 12 month period

All voluntary. Company gets to determine how many of each type of line to award in each category each month.
Cue the screaming that these voluntary measures are a give.
 
I am glad for any furlough that is cancelled or delayed.

Looks like every airline and their mother is counting on a quick recovery next year, which is why they are doing all this to avert costly furloughs. I just hope that rings true and doesn't backfire on us all.
 
Looks like every airline and their mother is counting on a quick recovery next year, which is why they are doing all this to avert costly furloughs.

No. Exactly none of them are doing that. They are all not sure how fast the recovery will be so they are working out the cheapest option to keep crews spooled up so they can be the first to restore capacity if there is a quick recovery.
 
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