Originally Posted by
Balder
Do you understand how badly JC weakened us as a pilot group? Or do you disagree with that premise all together? Hope that's a fair question.
I disagree with your premise, not altogether but essentially disagree.
We were weakened, but it was the entire situation at that time.
*Ned losing control to Jacob Schorr.
*Jacob Schorr bringing in institutional investors (Oak Tree).
*Oak Tree taking over and removing Jacob as President.
*Oak Tree bringing in Ben Baldanza as President.
*Oak Tree promoting Ben Baldanza to President and CEO.
*Ben Baldanza firing (over the period of 12 months) every VP, manager and/or director from Mirimar.
*VP OP's Scotty J being one of those senior leaders who got fired for a reason that we'll likely never know, probably just because he wasn't Bens friend from USAir.
*Oak Tree/Ben Baldanza bringing in Jeff C to replace Scotty J.
*The MEC (all four of them) using this fresh slate as an opportunity to make gains for the pilot group.
*"Palace Coups" inside Mirimar as the remaining upper management tried to consolidate power after each of Ben's removals.
*Jeff C's decision to remove 9 senior DE's/Checkpilots from the training dept.
* A large portion of the remaining training dept banding together, hiring an attorney, and attempting to sue both SPA ALPA and Spirit to regain their friends tng dept positions.
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*Oak Trees DECISION TO BRING IN INDIGO PARTNERS AS THE MANAGING PARTNER AND CONTROLLING INTEREST IN SPIRIT AIRLINES.
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*Indigo taking all expenditure power/discretion away from Spirit personnel (even VP OPs Jeff C). All spending went through Indigo reps.
*Indigo bringing Ford and Harrison, the anti ALPA law firm to work against us.
*Spirit changing from MD80's to Airbii. (the big push for transition coinciding with Jeff C taking over the tng dept and that ensuing mess).
*Ben Baldanza implementing his business model (Caribbean Visiting Friends and Relatives) at Spirit Airlines.
*Bill Franke, Indigo Partners, implementing his ULCC model on Spirit Airlines and finally,
*The world wide economic melt down of 2007/2008
And those were just the external influences on the Spirit Pilot group.
If you really do care to discover the cause of our weakness, you'll have to determine what makes a group weak, and I'll leave it for later but groups don't become weak from the external.
Blaming one VP OPs for all our problems is short sighted at best.
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