Originally Posted by
Bluedriver
1. Most pilots only spend 1 year at the 12 year pay scale?
2. That "theory" hasn't been tested in this environment, in the context of Spirit's contract, as it was negotiated many years ago.
3. Spirit's management may be irrational enough to self-sabotage its own business plans out of incompetence, negligence or spite.
The rest of the industry's management has clearly got the message, that 1st year pilots need much better pay, and if the JCBA is with JB, I'm confident, very confident, it will be properly addressed.
And I hope you are right as far as a JCBA giving competitive first year pay, I really do, but as the NK example clearly shows, some managements are quite content to see high attrition (the topic of this thread) of FOs and junior CAs because they can replace the FOs with new FOs who they are paying $50K a year. And that holds down payscales across the board, because that allows them to suppress FO pay with impunity, and the stats pretty much show that.
I have NEVER objected to B6s first year pay, since it is on a par with most and certainly better than that of F9, NK, or Hawaiian for that matter.
What I object to is the oft repeated mantra that casting the newbies fate to the whims of management is inherently logical, because it isn’t. Ideally, it should cost management MORE to bring on a new guy than to allow attrition to occur. THAT would provide real leverage for FO raises and junior CA raises that could stem attrition. And maybe the B6 management IS more enlightened than that of NK, but it truly seems like NK is quite happy to keep payscales low enough that they can actually depend upon more senior pilots moving on to be replaced by $50k newbies as part of their business model. Same for F9.
And yeah, at our NK current attrition rate MOST pilots will NEVER see that 12 year rate at all. Certainly not at NK.