Originally Posted by
NedsKid
Compared the full year costs of Spirit pilots to only 9 months of data, so the #'s in the 1st paragraph were inflated. Here's the right ones:
Based on Spirit 3rd Quarter 2015 #'s (first 9 months of 2015), salaries and benefits for all employees represent 22.8% of total operating expenses. What % is pilots? Unknown. Assume the average pilot costs Spirit about $120k in wages and benefits, that’s 90K over the first 9 months. Say we have 1250 pilots, that’s $112.5M, which is about 40% of total wages and benefits for the company, or 9.1% of total operating expenses. If we increased our hourly wages by 31% (how much we trail the industry average, overall), that’s now $147.4M, or a $34.9M increase. We’d now be 10.6% of operating expenses. Our share of the total cost pie would go up 1.5%. Is 1.5% too much to ask?
Good number crunching! According to the MEC updates we were 20 m apart over 5 years. I might be wrong. It was a while back. If so, from to company's side this is all just posturing. They already know they are about to get a good deal on us.
Listening to the rumors, and reading here it sounds like we will be below JB at DOS and pass them over the years. I am talking about rates only. Well... It is almost 2016. Once again we are chasing JB and have to yet catch them. I will wait and see how far we are from industry standard and what else has been offered/changed (scope, merger protection, retirement, trip credit, LTD, etc). If the TA is close to JB, and it catches up quickly, and it is retro to August 1st 2015... it may be a case of one in the hand vs two in the bush. I mean how long should we wait and work under these current rates and rules??? You can ask for DL pay but how many years of negotiating is that going to take? 5? 10? There is no way to know. I sure as **** do not want to work for 30% less for another 5 years not to mention 10. But on the other hand, we cannot start way below standard if we ever want to catch up.
I guess we will just have to see...