Originally Posted by
sailingfun
I am not sure where you get your information but most of what you post is false. First on Allegiant being the most profitable airline there is zero to support that. Allegiant does not report the airlines true profits of break them out from the parent companies results. No one knows what Allegiant makes. Estimates don’t have it nearly the most profitable on any basis.
As far as pilot pay Allegiant has not just lagged but severely lagged the industry. There is not a single year where they led the industry or even close. In many years the made half what the majors made and jet blue generally makes 50% more. You seem to not understand the value of soft money in a pilot contract. Your claims about leapfrogging everyone in 2016 are simply not true as Delta had already reached a tentative contract agreement months before Allegiant setting new highs for pilot pay and Allegiant did not come near those rates. In addition that TA at Delta was voted down and higher rates were quickly achieved.
The next area that’s critical in a contract is the benefit package. Allegiant’s is not just low it’s absurdly low. In 2019 the last year with full reporting it was 12,000 per pilot. The Majors including SWA and JetBlue were above 60,000 and that does not include profit sharing. Overall it appears Allegiant and Spirit have been racing each other to be dead last in total pilot compensation.
Here is a statement on where Allegiant actually makes its money.
The commissions that it earns is what makes Allegiant Air different from other airlines. They make profits from selling hotel rooms, rental cars, even Everglades boat tours and theme-park tickets. Not only that but they also get people to attend sales presentations for townhouses or condominiums.
Not sure where you get this Information from, but Allegiant absolutely does break out its Airline earnings from other earnings. We are a publicly traded company and all of the financial information is available. That is true of all airlines (except for Frontier until their IPO), and we all report the same information . Any analysis that leaves Allegiant out from most profitable likely did it because they only included the legacy carriers + SW. Otherwise, our average ticket revenues are $126 each way (up 10% since 2019). Ancillary revenue was $62 (up 15% since 2019). As the ancillary revenue includes the hotel and car rental commissions on top of the bag fees, the highlighted profits you mention represent a small amount of our overall revenue. Yes, these revenues are the most high profit margin items, but so is AA's sale of billions of miles to citi bank, etc.
Yes, our contract needs work, but when it was signed in 2015, the environment was very different than today, and movement at Allegiant was very different than it was at Delta back then (i.e. FOs were upgrading to captain in desirable bases in 12 months, little to no reserve, etc). Things are very different today and things look very favorable for us to receive a great contract.