Originally Posted by
threeighteen
For a while spirit pilots at any seniority level had *almost* all of the benefits of the 5% FO you described. Then they gave up line bidding and a whole bunch of other things on their last contract for a small raise. They could literally clear lines down to zero, even the guys on reserve. Then go back and pick up endless PPU if they wanted.
QOL is EVERYTHING. Pay becomes more and more worthless by the day, especially these days.
That only works when PPU itself is infinite. Somebody has to work weekends. Holidays. Red-eyes. Somebody’s going to get the PPU & someone’s going to be 25th in the queue. Seniority dictates how all that flying is allocated & more, & under nearly all circumstances, upgrading involves a loss of
relative seniority. Even under the best of times, I doubt a top 10% FO at Spirit wouldn’t have suffered any QOL loss by upgrading.
As much as pilots love to say it, the reality is QOL is
not EVERYTHING. It’s a lot. But pay & QOL are on a spectrum. (“Pay is worthless”? I don’t even know what that means.) We’d all have better QOL in the right seat than in the left, but the fact that so few make a full career of it supports the idea that it’s one among multiple considerations people actually base their decisions on.