As an industry COVID has really hit aviation hard as we know. The other fact is how many will return to aviation at all!!! From my company that went into administration I put a ball park figure on 20% at least never returning. 10% for sure have retrained and started other careers. 10% seem to be training or working in other industries that they could progress quickly in.
How many called it a day due to being close enough to retire and have enough to see them through until pension kicks in?
How many have had a reality check and enjoyed the time off and don’t want to go back?
How many have lost family members friends etc and now value that more than the money the sandpit can offer?
This situation has been going for so long and hit so many in different ways I think EK are going to be surprised about how many are saying thanks but no thanks.
I would concur with most of that, but not that EK will be surprised. They already know what awaits them.
From what I observed as an innocent observer, it seems a while back EK called most of the fired pilots back. Soon after that, they already started to take expressions of interest from non-former-employees.
What must have happened:
In the maybe 3 weeks after the recall of the fired ex-employees, they must have realised that maybe 70% reacted to the invitation (my guess), while 30% did not show any interest for many reasons: arranged themselves into an earlier retirement, found an intermediary job home, left aviation altogether, went home and wife is going to work, etc. There are multitude of reasons why someone won't move again to Dubai, after he had been fired in a rather brutal way. Also most US pilots are returning home, the job market is so strong with thousands of captains being early retired.
So suddenly as EK you realise your restart pipeline over the next months is not that full as you expected. You still have a bit of time as a company, since you are currently busy on re-onboarding your former employees who are willing to return, but you also have a very clear picture, when this former-employees-pipeline will be dried up.
So yes, I also believe the expat airlines will soon have to restart offering their former packages.
In 12 months the world will live with Covid, it will be endemic everywhere in the world, most people will minimise their risk with the vaccine, others prefer to risk to end up on ventilators, but aviation will be back to more or less normal levels. The US has shown how quickly customers return once the society treats covid as part of life.
At the same time thousands of well qualified pilots will have taken early retirement (all the majors have had such programs), and many more young pilots will have left for another career.