I see a lot of inane and ill thought out comments made here (quelle suprise). I thought I might correct, or add to it ;-)
For those that keep stating that the airline will shrink - why? We have ground operations staff/equipment/buildings that are not down scalable. On the contrary, they are more efficient per unit of production as production increases. So the bigger we get, the cheaper per unit we become.
Aircraft are the revenue source - getting rid of a lot or all of our 777s (assuming they are not replaced with some other aircraft) will INCREASE our cost of production per unit. We own or finance lease around 3/4s of our aircraft. It is only the operating lease aircraft that can (presumably) be gotten rid of relatively cheaply. So we are stuck with cheap assets/finance leases for the foreseeable future - why take an even bigger short term hit by selling out now?
We have more aircraft now than we did two years ago since we now have the KA aircraft. We will (eventually) need more pilots than we have ever had before.
Our maximum training rate is around 10% (2015 was our peak training year and the sausage mill was running flat chat).
Looking at past seismic aviation events (9/11, GFC) flying recovered to 90% within 6-12 months - then took another 2-3 years to recover the last 10%. Covid is playing out differently - though in domestic markets (China, US and Australia) actual or forecast flying is above 2019 levels. So when eventually most international travel opens, we should expect at least 90% overall flying in the near term. Will that be xmas 2021? mid 2022? xmas 2022?
If we got rid of say 600 pilots or so - it would take 2 years to recover them in terms of training capacity limitations. Getting rid of the based pilots therefore makes no sense unless driven by some other factor.
If all your flying is done to/from a hub - then it makes sense to base/roster everyone from your hub. If the unit cost per pilot in HK is say $2X per hour - and $1X per hour on the base, then yes JCR will drive the location of some of the pilots to outports. But if the differential is removed (COS18) then the unit cost in HK might be say $1.3X - suddenly the economics aren't so clear. Having said that - I personally don't believe the recent actions are economically driven - I think it is all related to the working visa issues. That does beg the question though - why AOAC first then Oz (and then FRA?). I have no data on that - only opinion so not worth airing here. (after all - I am trying to be as factual as I can be)
I have heard some interesting 'departure rate' rumours (losing one pilot per day).
Here are the departure rates for last 6 years or so
2015 - 63, 2016 - 92, 2017 - 128, 2018 - 168, 2019 - 171, 2020 - 160* (*estimated)
Using data from Oct ASL till today (14May) I would estimate that 60 have left so far this year (101 have left from OctASL till 14May). The 60 so far this year equates to an annual rate of around 170 for 2021 (pre VSS/base closure obviously)
When compared to 2018, 2019 and 2020, the rate for the first 5.5 months is comparable. Base closures and VSS will clearly blow that number up. So I suspect we will be SIGNIFICANTLY short of pilots if you look at 2023 instead of summer 2021 requirements.
End of numbers - beginning of my speculation.
I think we need all the pilots we can get - not today -but for about 1 year to 18months from now. We are training constrained - pre training ban etc we were maxed out at 10% increase in pilot numbers - so clearly we shouldn't let our total pilot numbers drop below say 80-85% of our mid 2023 pilot requirements. Since the training ban - we have more trainers than before plus, thanks to the company response to the training ban, the training courses are more efficient. So maybe the real rate of pilot increase is significantly higher than my 10% - maybe up to 15%?