The pilot deal calls for a MOAB (Mother of all Bids)in May. Supposedly it will look at the manning requirements for next may or june (approx) then it will assign via displacements into those positions. People will be re-trained into their new position via some new plan that will be the most effecient and cost effective. Most likely close to their recurrent training date. You will know where and what you will fly with the results of the MOAB and will most likely stay in your seat until they can get to you. Rumor has it that there could be a relatively large group to go initially and that the shool house can only train about 200 a month, that is why the drawn out furlough session.
I am not sure how the FA''s will work since there wont be a whole lot of re-training like the pilots go through. If I am correct most junior FA''s are already checked out on all the aircraft, yes?
Might be wise to watch how USAir does their 890 FA''s. I know for the pilots, since we are only checked out on 1 aircraft at a time, it would create a severe hardship/shortage to drop 2500 all at once, simply because that will create a lot of empty seats and the pilts needed to fill them will come from other aircraft. The training time is about 1 month when switching aircraft.
Hope that sheds some light on it.