BusCapt

Have had several spirit pilots in the jumpseat recently. It sounds like they have made the place quite tolerable from a schedule standpoint. The last jumpseater was fairly junior, but was able to pick up or drop down to whatever credit he wanted. Lots of scheduling flexibility.

I was curious to how this was achieved. It sounds (and I'm summarizing a fairly long and detailed conversation) that the pilot group showed tremendous backbone and solidarity in fighting for their QOL improvements and scheduling language. They did not have "rats" (his words, not mine) picking up open time trips, especially during contract negotiations. They were organized, motivated, and had some modicum of self respect as a work-group. In all, it appears that they didn't make very good victims. They sounded a lot more like intelligent professionals that demanded and fought for a good work-life balance.

If anyone disagrees with my take on this, then I'd be interested to hear. I've only been at two airlines (20 years total) and am still fairly green to the industry.

nkbux

Spirit guy here... this is arguable... we have fabulous flexibility and get a lot of time off... HOWEVER there were imo some concessions in the QOL on this latest contract. The big IF now is how will everything change when PBS is implemented. ALPA and NK have a joint group operating under an LOA to have PBS implemented within a year from DOS. Good news is PBS comes with improved soft time... trip rig etc....bad news is at this point we have no idea how it will affect pairing construction and the red/green board (our system for being able to drop straight). It passed by 70% so overall your getting a pretty good idea. As far as rats goes remember the company filed suit against us for an apparent job action against the operation. There were people out for themselves but for the most part we were tired of the lack of progress and felt that the NMB was our worst enemy to achieve what we wanted. Wish you guys well in the next round, I believe in 3 years at NK we’ll be in for another fistfight although we’re certainky MUCH closer to our ultimate goals than we were 10 months ago. For the record I barely fly in the summer so I can be a dad and have no trouble dropping down to 20-22 days off a month.

BusCapt

Thank you for the feedback. What was the outcome of that lawsuit? Were any careers sidelined/ended?

That sounds amazing from a QOL standpoint. I understand there may be some negatives and a growing pains/learning curve when PBS comes, but I think after a while you'll probably appreciate the flexibility and customization it provides. This month was my B-day month. With PBS, I was able to pick some high credit pairings in the beginning of the month, and get the second half of the month off without using any vacation. This has been my consistent experience over the last 17 years of using PBS at two different airlines.

Lewbronski

Spirit filed a motion for a temporary restraining order (TRO) against Spirit ALPA and their “rogue” work action that violated the status quo provisions of the RLA. The TRO compelled Spirit ALPA to essentially force all of their dudes who were calling in sick and refusing to pick up open time as a form of protest to stop doing that. The judge granted the motion and issued the TRO. To be clear, afaik, Spirit ALPA was not behind any of that but the judge basically put the onus on them to end it.

In the motion, Spirit actually quoted from pilots on this forum as evidence supporting their case. They also quoted from at least one Spirit pilot’s vm greeting saying something like, “If this is scheduling, I’m not talking to you.”

The TRO was to remain in effect until (off the top of my head) a cooling-off period was entered or a PEB was ended. That doesn’t make sense based on how the RLA should work but I believe that’s what it said. I don’t have it in front of me.

The bottom line, though, is that the “rogue” pilots probably kind of screwed Spirit ALPA because it handed the NMB ammunition to keep them in mediation for way longer than they otherwise may have had to be in mediation. It increased the pressure on ALPA to settle because it significantly delayed the timeline of getting to a release. Unions have no leverage without the credible possibility that they can get to a release. It really handed Spirit management an advantage. ALPA likely could have gotten quite a bit better results without the illegal work action.

Should be a lesson learned for all unions going forward. They still did relatively well, though. That’s probably because they had proven their resolve with their 2010 strike and their stance up until the point they made that one big mistake.

av8or

Excellent excellent comment.

Ala5ka

Probably a stupid question but what can a TRO actually accomplish? Hypothetically, If a pilot wanted to call out sick or not pick up open time, isn’t that their choice as an employee?

nkbux

There was to be no change to “the status quo”...percentage of sick calls and open time pick ups etc...

echelon

Well yeah but how is that enforceable? If I'm going to call out sick I don't call the union first to ask permission or make sure that my sick call won't put ALPA over its "status quo" sick call quota. And nobody can force people to pick up opentime, right? So what did that TRO actually accomplish?

Lewbronski

It’s pretty enforceable. APA pilots did something very similar in 1999: in reaction to the purchase of Reno Air and acquisition of their lower wage pilots (and AA’s failure to immediately integrate them), APA pilots started calling in sick and not picking up open time.

Soooo, AA management got a TRO against APA basically forcing APA to rein in its pilots - almost exactly like Spirit last year. But....APA pilots doubled down and kept going.

End result was APA got bankrupted with a $45 million dollar fine. They had $36 million in the bank I believe. Their two main exec’s also got personally fined thousands of dollars. Judges typically get very nasty when a person or organization openly acts in contempt of a court order. A bankrupt union is pretty ineffective.

A bunch of passengers filed lawsuits seeking damages from APA. I don’t know if those got very far but there was talk of individual pilots possibly being liable for damages because of the way APA was (is?) set up.

You don’t have to like all of that or agree with it but that’s the way it is. If you’ve spent much time in court, then you know that’s not a place where your notion of fairness matches up very well with the law and the way the legal system see things.

If unions learned to play by the RLA and exploit it, we could all do a lot better. But what the Spirit and AA pilots did were both clearly illegal job actions. Pretty dumb and likely orchestrated by guys who don’t understand the RLA. Ultimately counterproductive for themselves and the profession. Clean kill by the judge.

ShyGuy

It's a problem (and illegal) when it's a concerted action by the pilot group. Spirit forums were full of people calling out others for picking up trips. And other dummies openly writing to stop picking up open time trips. One guy even made a website that listed names of Spirit pilots that were picking up open time trips. That site was closed before mgt could identify who did it, but if they did, that guy would be fired.

Management keeps track of all sick time usage and open time pickups and have all sorts of graphs to study patterns. All they have to do is show a judge the pattern 'before' and 'after' and show some proof (eg, pilots writing on APC to stop picking up open time trips). They just have to show deviance from historical norms along with whatever evidence they have the pilots are acting up via some sort of campaign.

The Spirit TRO was full of APC posts by many NK pilots in their NK threads. It's fully enforceable and the union itself can be held accountable (fined big time) if they don't try and squash an illegal work action. This is one area where you will lose. Historical precedent is with management, not pilots. Do not participate or partake in any illegal job action or something that could be construed as such. And certainly do not post about doing anything illegal. Your union speaks for you, let them do their job.