Sinking Ship

Heard a funny yet depressing joke about the company i work for the other day. "Whats the difference between the Titanic and the comapany i work for for?... The Titanic had a band playing". Im sure most of you have seen the news stories the past couple days on changes at my company. Some of what the media is reporting is true however some is not true, at least not yet. Lets start off by talking about facts first. Then well get into the rumors.

First off on December 13 the new hire class that had started on December 5 were told to go home. The 20 members of this class are officially on furlough status and are the first official causalities of the AMR bankruptcy for my company. The next day, a "WARN" letter was sent to all ATR pilots that are based in DFW, yes this includes me unfortunately, it also includes all the captains in base as well. If you do some searching im sure you can find the letter because i know media sites have all ready posted it. To paraphrase it, it said that within 60 days there would be "employment reductions/displacements" affecting the 59 first officers and the 60 captains in DFW. The reason for this letter is because the company plans on returning the 12ATR's that operate in DFW back to the leasing companies and close down the DFW base. This is said to occur on or near Feb 13th, however a later letter from our ceo stated that this could occur as early as late January. As per our contract the company would first have to displace then furlough by seniority order.

Let me take a second and explain what a "displacement" is for the non airline folk reading this. I'll use myself as an example since i will be a part of this. When they close my base here in DFW, i will have the option to transfer to any base/any aircraft that my seniority number will hold. I plan on choosing Chicago CRJ which my seniority number can hold. I will transfer to Chicago, the person in Chicago that has a lower seniority number then me will then get "displaced" This cycle will happen likely hundred of times until it gets down to the last people whos seniority number isn't high enough to fit in any base. (presumably the newest people at the company) they will then be the ones that are actually furloughed.

The above are about the only facts we have as of now. Now lets talk about some of the nasty rumors that are floating around. Perhaps the worst one and unfortunately one of the more plausible ones is the company furloughing "out of seniority order". Obviously the above mentioned process of displacements costs the company a lot of money in retraining people to fly different types of airplanes. Spending more money is not what a company in CH11 bankruptcy wants to do. A lot of people believe that the company will ask the bankruptcy judge to ignore our contract and allow the company to furlough the DFW ATR pilots instead of allowing them to displace. This would save the company money but would be a HUGE injustice to the 119 pilots that would lose their jobs. Now for people like myself who are fairly junior at the company (i have about 500 below me on the list) this would stink, but we may end up getting furloughed later this year regardless. The people that would be getting just shafted are the captains who have been with the company for a minimum of 7 years. It would be completely unfair for them to lose their jobs while new guys hired this year were allowed to keep their jobs. The company is insisting so far that the contract will be followed but one can only wonder.... money vs morals what normally wins out in today's business world?

Sadly the above paragraph will certainly not be the only cuts coming. It has been widely spoken that the company wants to adventurly park the remainder of the ATR's (MIA, SJU bases) as well as get rid of our smaller regional jets the ERJ135/140. If the company does indeed get rid of all 3 of these aircraft types without adding new aircraft, were looking at a loss of around 120 planes. Thats a little over a third of the entire fleet. This would most likely mean up to 1200 pilots being jobless. There are numerous scenarios with how this could play out, sadly non of them paint a bright future for my company or its employees.

This has been.. how should i put it.. disheartening few days as all of this news has broken in my days off. Its an unnerving feeling  being directly in the middle of the first round of cuts. Must say that it was very refreshing to get back in the cockpit to start a 4 day trip this evening. The weather was perfect and the landing was smooth. Really helped to clear my mind of all the doom and gloom that has developed these last 3 days. It reminded me that i still love this job and there's nothing else like it. Just have to leave it up to the man up stairs to see how the early stages of my career will play out. Thankfully there are some other airlines that are currently hiring that i can use as a backup plan if it becomes necessary. I knew this industry was volatile but i honestly didn't expect to feel its bite so soon.