It's tough to make a direct comparison. My understanding is that even Allegiant's new contract contains some objectionable language and provisions. Their new hourly rates are significantly higher than our hourly rates. This is the easy part to compare.

The comparison becomes murky when you start trying to place a value on some of the work rules and other conditions in the contract. Just as a quick example, Allegiant is allowed to schedule pilots for a certain number of single days off in any given month. Frontier's CBA (except for special/limited circumstances) prohibits single days off. What's this worth to you?

I'm certainly no expert on the new Allegiant contract, but there are probably hundreds of these types of things. Some beancounter could claim to assign a value to each of these items down to the penny, but I still think it comes down to what an individual pilot deems important.

With all this being said, the top F9 captain rate as of today is $160.21/hr. I don't have the number in front of me, but I seem to recall the new Allegiant top rate is somewhere around $205/hr. I think even the most pro-company-biased beancounter would have a tough time saying the difference in our work rules makes up this kind of disparity.

I hear all the time that Frontier's work rules are uber fantastic. I'm sorry, but I just don't see it. Yes, we have a few things that are very desirable, but the contract package is lacking in so many other aspects that the net result is an average to below-average quality of life.

If I had to explain our contract to a non aviation person, I'd say we're paid well below industry average, but our contract allows us to work extra hard so we can obtain approximately 80% of industry average by working 125% as hard as an average pilot.

I want to make it clear that I'm not taking anything away from the accomplishments of Allegiant with their new contract. I think they've definitely improved their position. I'm hoping our negotiating committee will do the same for us.