Originally Posted by
Qotsaautopilot
So here is your official answer and don’t worry I don’t take it personal.
The TA scope is much much better than current book and if a merger is on the horizon we would be wise to accept it. I’ve said this before.
Now for outsourcing:
Codesharing is unlimited. Furlough protection with the block hour floor protection added in the TA. We can debate if that’s good or bad for the airline with the 99% to 1% profit structure that has been stated.
Capacity Purchase Agreements (CPA). These are the agreements most regional or fee for departure airlines like Skywest or TransStates operate under. We have furlough protection and the block hour floor protection added in the TA
These types of agreements are unlimited by the amount of airplanes or size of airplanes. If Spirit wants to enter into this type of agreement with Skywest or any other carrier for E175s, MRJs, C172s, A320s, 737s, 747, etc, they are free to do so without limit.
This straight from Art. I am not quoting him verbatim but the facts remain.
Again we can debate on if this type of agreement makes good business sense and the likelihood of Spirit executing such an agreement in the future. What we do know is that every legacy that has the ability to use these types of agreements does so all the way up to the max allowed by their pilots’ scope both in the amount and size of the aircraft. Alaska utilizes them and has no limit but has no not placed 737s at the fee for departure carriers just yet. Jetblue has no limit and flys E190s with seniority list pilots. Southwest does not allow this type of flying to be done.
Again, the TA is leaps and bounds better than our current agreement and that includes scope. Imo the above items are massive exposures as they are currently and many of our other exposures have been taken care of in the TA. There is an argument that the NMB will not support us in the fight for these items because Spirit has not ever used this before. We were also very cheap before. They went along with us on mergers because of the current state of the industry. I could say the same about outsourcing to fee for departure carriers.
On scope in a vacuum (which it is clearly not)
We vote yes and we mitigate a lot of risks and leave this little gem to fester for another 8 years.
We vote no and we remain exposed all over for an unknown but hopefully shorter period of time and still maybe don’t get what we want.
We each can decide I guess.
Two things you need to think about
:
1. Do you think this company would ever want to start regional flying, or enter into a code share with flying we are capable of? If so explain why because I don't see it.
2. If this TA got voted down do you think the scope is what is going to be changed when we went back to the table? We already achieved some pretty big gains in scope as you said, and it doesn't seem to highest on most peoples gripe list.
All I'm saying is vote how you want, but realize that even if this TA fails, which I don't think it will, section 1 will probably remain. I would guess that the only changes we would receive would come to section 3 and in the end it would be at a financial loss.