Originally Posted by WelcomeToBen

I don't know who these guys are who are able to credit over 100 hours on a consistent basis but I can tell you I've certainly never met any in person. As a commuter, it is nearly impossible to credit anything over 85 hours unless you are willing to completely sacrifice your personal life. I have been here for 18 months and have yet to credit more than 90 hours in a month while typically crediting between 72 and 80 hours.

Yes, I've heard stories of guys that live in base and sit on the phone with crew scheduling 24/7 crediting an egregious amount of hours but this is certainly not the norm (and also not really helping out the rest of the pilot group but that's another argument). It's also not the way I hope most of us want to live our lives in order to make what United and Delta A320 pilots are making.

The point is, although transition conflict and some of our other work rules are nice, they need to be supplemented with more important things such as a stronger trip rig (at least 5.25 hours per calendar day) and industry standard A320 pay. Without those two things, we will all be spending the rest of our careers sitting on the phone with crew scheduling begging for open time at straight pay and taking ourselves down to 4 days off per month just to make what are brothers and sisters at United and Delta are making.

Don't get me wrong. I love it here and really would like to make a career of Spirit. We have some great work rules. We also have some severe deficiencies (pay, trip rigs and retirement) and I think some guys like to try to justify those deficiencies with things such as the transition conflict. The transition conflict is great and I think we should keep it, but we shouldn't have to count on it every single month in order to credit 120 hours so that we can make the same amount as our A320 peers who only need to credit 80 hours per month to make the same amount of money. In my 18 months here, I've experiences a whopping 3 transition conflicts, 2 of them on RSV which if you actually follow the contract, you'll know that you cannot pick up open time in order to credit above guarantee.

If we are going to make some gains in the next contract, we need to quit living in fantasy land and admit that we have some serious deficiencies. Yes, Spirit is a great place to work and we have some good work rules but seriously guys, let's be real. We have some work to do.