EVERYTHING we have asked for has been indepentently proven to be completely affordable while also allowing Spirit to be successful. There is no point in debating that fact. We aren’t asking for industry leading. It’s beyond reasonable and imo way too low considering we will probably see $300/hr narrowbody pilots at united in a year.

All Spirit has to do is agree. They don’t, not because they can’t afford it, but because they just don’t want to and they don’t seem to have a grip on today’s reality of pilot compensation or have a long term vision for the airline.

Making slow incremental increases would have worked but Spirit would’ve had to come to the table outside of section six and offered raises out of the blue in 2012 and then again in 2015 and again in 2018. They didn’t do that. Some may not think we tried that approach. We did. Instead they are insistent of 5 year contracts and negotiating endlessly so that we are so far behind that unless we achieve massive increases we will never catch up. We must capitalize on the best negotiating environment most of us will see in a career and if we squander it on a minimal increase there is nothing that says Spirit will act any different eight years from now and the negotiation environment may well not be as much in our favor. What’s so sad is that even if we achieve everything we’ve asked for we will most likely be just as far behind next time around. Taking less simply isn’t an option and not doing so isn’t going to negatively affect the viability of Spirit as an ULCC