Things are not looking good for my employer, and by extension, me. They’ve just announced that 49 pilots were furloughed yesterday. All of those pilots were still in new-hire ground school.

Being furloughed is basically the same as being fired. The only difference is that when the company hires again, they have to hire the furloughed pilots first. Furlough sounds like not such a bad thing, and makes one think that you might get some kind of benefits. This isn’t the case.

When a unionized company furloughs, they have to start at the bottom of the seniority list. Right now there are still 197 pilots under me on the seniority list, so I should be okay for the time being.

Still no word on the official date for the last CRJ flights out of New York. I’m guessing it’s going to be sometime around the end of September. After that, I’ll have to go through some training and much paperwork in order to be based in Chicago.