11/9 was utilised by airline managers to make certain adjustments which had either been planned or researched and they suddenly had an Allah given excuse to implement them in short order. We all know that. The middle managers, who had planned the cuts, then found themselves subject to an axing too.
Well, come January when Mr & Mrs Bloggs pop down to the now closed branch of Thomas Cook to book their 2 week summer hols, the charter market will go into a spin; you cant add capacity overnight.We all know that.You can ACMI a bit, but with the level of layoffs industry wide it will be more difficult and more expensive.
If airline managers, and pilots/cabin crew for that matter, had any sense, rather than lay people off (by all means store aircraft) they would have put them on unpaid leave/job sharing/reduced hours/salary reduction - whatever means they could come up with to keep people in work and their skills current. That way when things improve, which they will, the labour pool is still there ready for an immediate upturn !
As it turns out there are going to be several hundred extremely cheesed off people;just read the bmi redundancies thread to realise that even if they are asked to come back they will be very disillusioned and probably extremely reluctant to to do anymore than the contract demands, assuming of course that bmi dont go down the pan first. That's just a gratuitous bit of scandal mongering
So things will get better, but in the longer, rather than shorter term. The problem which has to be addressed though is that the bottom end, inexperienced and perhaps looking for that first job, may well become disenchanted and go elsewhere and the top end may take early retirement. Whatever, there will suddenly be a shortage of crews and panic will set in again! The winners in this will be easyjet and to lesser extent Go; Ryan have pissed people off with their new recruitment policy, but its MOL's bat and ball so how he plays it is up to him.
Anyone who pays Ryan for a rating is not helping matters; if every last one of us boycotted Ryanair we might see a result. Regrettably, I dont see that happening.
Essentially it looks a tho it will be every man and woman for themselves; is that so new?