Originally Posted by
CincoDeMayo
Oh man, I would love LOAs.
Normally I would say the paid LOAs we saw during Covid were going to be a once in a career event. But...I could see LOAs for CAs because of this engine issues. Furloughs only makes sense over a certain amount of time, a longer time frame, and we should not see that with these engines. Pratt said they are going to "make Spirit whole", whatever that means, so there would be money coming back (I assume) for the direct result of the groundings.
So it would not surprise me to take a few hundred CAs off the books for 4-6 months of 2024 while they deal with this, for some LOA pay, knowing that its cheaper than being over staffed, cheaper than furloughs, and cheaper if you can have a financial line item (LOA pilots on leave cost) to present to Pratt on the economic impacts. As for FOs, still way too much churn with attrition to allow any to take LOAs.
Sign me up.
A few of us were positing the same thoughts the other day, between NEO engines and then depending on the merger timeline it’s possible there could be over staffing as yellow draws down and pilots and crew are incrementally moved to blue ops. I’d happily sit that out on covid LOA terms and jump on the last car of the train once they have all the kinks worked out.