I thought this statement was suspicious. So, I ran the #'s.
Using APC's posted current hourly payrates, I calculated the average hourly rate years 1-15 for both FO and CA using: Alaska, American (average of 737 and MD-80), Continental (SN), Delta (A320), Hawaiian (717), United (A320), US Airways East (A320), US Airways West (A320), AirTran, Allegiant, Frontier, JetBlue (A320), Southwest, Sun Country, USA 3000, Virgin, and Spirit's now DOS rates. I then compared this average rate to both Spirit's new DOS rates and Spirit's new rates @ DOS +4.
While there are obviously 100's of #'s when you get every FO and CA pay rate from year 1-15 for every carrier here (so I won't post them here), the result:
- Spirit's average new DOS payscale for CA's lags industry average CA pay by 11.6%.
- Spirit's average new DOS payscale for FO's lags industry average FO pay by 20.4%.
- Spirit's average new DOS+4 payscale for CA's leads industry average CA pay by 7.0%.
- Spirit's average new DOS+4 payscale for FO's lags industry average FO pay by 2.6%.
When none of your current payrates are industry average, and, even 4 years from now, roughly 1/2 your pilots are still below industry average (from 4 years ago) . . .
Spirit did not get parity with the industry average.
I included Southwest (
) as well as the 9 carriers that took concessions in the last decade (either bankruptcy, threat of bankruptcy [AA], or arbitration loss [AK]).
For future reference, this is the current industry average pay for A-320 type aircraft year 1-15 (save yourself the hour it takes to plug all of it into Excel):
CA FO
102.63 35.00
126.86 76.00
129.88 91.00
132.48 93.50
135.50 96.00
137.74 98.50
139.63 100.50
142.48 103.00
144.63 106.50
146.98 108.50
148.85 110.50
150.99 111.50
151.33 111.50
151.67 111.50
151.95 111.50
If you want me to e-mail the excel spreadsheet with all the #'s, just PM me. The #'s don't lie.