Originally Posted by
ElZilcho
A Domestic Airline with limited International services is obviously what the next 6-12 months look like.. possibly the next 18-24 months if the World really drops the ball with COVID. However, lets get Realistic here for a moment.
Of the 1100(ish) operational Pilots, 650 are on Widebody's and 450 on the Airbus. Wipe 387 off the bottom and there goes 2/3 of the Airbus FO's (and SO's).
Let assume the 777 is never to fly again, that's approximately 250 Captains and FO's who need down training. (We'll ignore the surviving SO's for now)
Lets assume the 787 Workload is halved, that will add another 100 or so Widebody Pilots that need a seat change.
So we have 250 777 Pilots, who are (mostly) Senior to the 787 Pilots, so potentially all 200 787 Pilots will get Down-trained as 250 777 Pilots are allocated the remaining 100 or so 787 Jobs.
Once that's happened, there's now approximately 350 Widebody Pilots to filter down onto the Airbus fleet.. Seniority will be all over the place here due to lifestyle choices and over 65's on the Airbus, but for the most Part, the Widebody Pilots will have seniority and many A320 Pilots will be down-trained.
Of Course, Down-Training is Seniority based but you then need to consider the implications of down-training a Standards Pilot off a Fleet and reducing the training capacity. Then you run into the issue of displacing Queenstown qualified Airbus Pilots, and finally, as Junior Airbus Captains on year 2-3 Pay are replaced by Senior Widebody Pilots on year 12 pay, they wage bill for the Airbus Fleet will increase by $30-$50k per Captain (and similar in the FO Ranks).
Once all of the above has been tidied up and all surviving Pilots have been re-shuffled to their new positions it'll be 2025 and COVID will have either decimated the Planet (in which case the above never happened because everyone lost their jobs), or it'll be well behind us.
The point I'm trying to make, is Logistically, the Airline simply cannot re-shuffle Hundreds of Pilots overnight... and by the time they've finished, COVID will hopefully be behind us.
If they make too many Redundant off the bottom, the Airbus Fleet won't be able to operate. Yes, they can quickly down-train Captains to the RHS, but again, it's Seniority based, meaning any surviving SO's must be appointed first and they require a full course.
Secondly, another Problem with "Last on First off" Redundancies is that the most expensive Pilots (Widebody Captains) are un-touchable yet have very little work if we become a "domestic Airline".
Don't get me wrong, of the 1200 Pilots on the list, I'm in the bottom half and have been polishing up my CV and budgeting on a period of LWOP or Reduced Pay.
This is an extremely complex problem to solve (for all Airlines) due to the Logistics of large scale seat changes.
I expect there's to be a lot of Leave without Pay offers and Part-Time agreements on the table while we navigate COVID.
387 Redundancies might not enough for the April 2021 schedule, but it could well be too many for the April 2022 Schedule.
Anyone got a Crystal Ball?