Even with a 4 leg day 3x in a row if you live close enough to the airport you’ll be home to relax. Eat dinner at home see your wife & kids etc. Overnights mean 4 leg day wait for hotel van wait for hotel key eat hotel/restaurant food 5am hotel van getting through security walking around in big airports to find your gate. All that stuff that a lot of the allegiant people don’t wanna deal with. That’s why people still apply to this place and people here are getting High blood pressure tryin to decide whether to leave or not.

Yep! Don’t worry though…that’s worth working for half the pay of any respectable airline!

That’s why it’s so frustrating bc this could be the best job in the industry if only the company valued its pilots and thought of the company as an airline instead of some BS travel company.

The pay/retirement will absolutely be there. MG knows that is the only way this place grows. the bigger question is whether we get any work rules?

I honestly don't what to believe with the work rules rumors i'm hearing. union sources say that they are only looking for industry standard work rules but then AR has talked about zero percent unstack for the last three years... so is the union looking for industry standard and management is being obtuse (most likely) or is AR digging in his heels on unstack which no airline in the industry has (unlikely imo - can't imagine he would be that naïve)?

from what i'm hearing, management's early offers in January/February were pathetic and laughably out of touch. since Alaska's TA, management has upped the rates/retirement from where they were but it is still less than alaska's. So i believe management will read the room and come to their senses with some realistic rates/retirement but the difference between management and union on work rules might as well be the pacific ocean.

side note: delta's unstack protects top 30% and that is highest in the industry that i've seen.

One key thing to note about the stacking/unstacking issue. The company has decided that NavBlue is the PBS system that they want to use (after bankrupting SmartPref). NavBlue only offers 100% or 0% unstacking. So you either give the company the ability to disregard 100% of your seniority/bid or you give them 0% ability to disregard your seniority/bid. For my vote, I'll take 0%.

The way other companies get around that limitation by mandating a staffing model. Our management has been adamantly opposed to having a staffing requirement (for obvious understaffing reasons).

One of two things needs to happen: (1) 100% unstacking or (2) a Staffing model.

Also, (if I understand it correctly) it's only line holders that would be 0%. I think the reserve lines are used to cover the flights (i.e. 100% unstacked). If that's the case, essentially we would be 10-30% unstacked (depending on reserve lines) if you counted all pilots in the bid.

I'm calling a bluff on your post: How does staffing model prevent 100% of my seniority being disregarded? If 100% of my seniority can be disregarded in my bid then how does a staffing model prevent that from happening? Even with extra pilots, if they can just disregard my seniority then the staffing model is irrelevant? what am i missing?

Besides: Don't Jetblue, Spirit, Alaska, Frontier, and others all use Navblue for PBS? you're telling me all of those airlines' management can disregard 100% of the pilots' bid? Again, i'm calling BS. There has to be a reason no other airline has a 0% unstack and yet navblue is still a regularly used PBS. We can talk about industry standard all we want for work rules but i hope the union is not overplaying their hand on this, i just don't see how that helps anyone. No way MG will allow allegiant to be the first and only airline with a 0% unstack in a PBS - again Delta is the highest at 30%.

Either way, you seem to believe that AR is still on his 0% unstack position and that hasn't changed during negotiations? i honestly don't know because my sources either don't know or won't confirm what the gulf is for work rules they just say we its light year apart for PBS. Your post makes me think that the unstack/PBS stuff is the huge disconnect with work rules. if that is true then i was probably wrong about getting a contract by 2024 at the earliest - we won't get one until 2026 at the earliest.

Also: what is smartpref? how did we bankrupt it? i see something about crewing solutions and smart pref but that's it on the google machine.

last one: why isn't any of this stuff in the contract comparison? why doesn't the union put the other airlines staffing models into their contract comparison slide show? hearing AR try to explain this piece away on his recent video makes me more pessimistic, he strikes me as trying to reinvent the wheel or something with this unstack stuff. no other airline has it and to bring up united's staffing model just seems bizarre, like he's grasping at straws. we have enough to fix in this contract why draw a line in the sand that goes way beyond what any other airline has...

this whole is starting to smell like a d*ck measuring contest between AR and MG and the losers will be the pilots.

1000% this! I've got 6-8 months to see how it plays out and have other options, but the potential QOL here is a huge attraction for me.

Live close to the airport vette, and the QOL could be very nice. Hope it works out for you.

Not saying this applies to you, but anyone forgoing a possible legacy job to stay at Allegiant should realize the above characterizes domestic narrowbody; lot’s of legacy pilots’ lives don’t fit this description & with the rapid advancement going on it’s possible to quickly find a niche that suits you. Plenty of examples of this if you read the other airlines’ threads.

Staffing model could require more reserves. or instead of the Fnt crew doing the Fnt Sav turn it can have the Sav pilots do it since they don’t have as many lines. Or vice versa. Or a 3 leg between dsm Pgd aus then dsm could be moved around.

Currently with high demand must work days there is 100% ustacking because the most senior person will have their days off prevented.

Honestly having it work from the most junior and go up is fine. The most junior works christmas. The big deal is when the company uses every month and does it outside reverse seniority.

How about massive pay rates, DC and then ncentivize the "we are a different business model" work rules they dont want to change?. Make it expensive to have your reserve shift moved. You have to get reassigned? 300% pay. Would it be worth it to be paid out for those things? Seems like a win win for everyone.

One thing about the stacking. They could do 2 rounds of line holder bidding. First round is unstacked and is for x percent of line holders.

I'm not bluffing! lol But for real... I'll try to answer as best as I can. I have a level two or three (maybe) understanding of how the entire system works, but here goes.

First, Yes, as I said in my other post. Several other airlines use NavBlue and as I said in that post, they counter the unstacking with a staffing model. For example, (made up numbers to explain the concept) if there are 8 flights that need to be staffed, the staffing model will require 15 pilots. X% reserve coverage, plus a couple for days off, plus a couple of guys on vacation, plus X% slop. This ensures that if #1 Pilot wants off, there is coverage for that guy to have off and for there to be guys on vacation, etc. An example of a staffing model would be what united has which is something like this: Block hours/87 + 12% Reserves + charter hours/87 + sick hours + vacation + Training = Staffing. That way the airlines have enough people to properly staff the flying while also accounting for all of the sick/vacation/training/etc. Our company routinely plans on utilizing VFNs and OT pick ups to cover flying. If they had a required staffing model, they wouldn't be able to do that.

I covered the "how does a staffing model fix that" portion. Now for the 100% disregard portion. With 100% unstacking, they would have the ABILITY to disregard 100% of your bid. With 0% they wouldn't have any of that ability. Functionally, if all the lineholders wanted off, it would build reserve coverage/lines to cover that day with reserves (and I believe one or two extra reserves in case something happened). Functionally, since it is an algorithm and not a person doing the scheduling, it is unlikely that it would disregard 100% of your bid. It would run thousands of iterations to come up with a solution that would create the least amount of impact. However, if you're the number one guy in base and want day X off and you don't get it because it was the least amount of impact, are you going to care? No, you're most likely going to be ****ed and complain about how you got screwed by the PBS system.

Thus, you either need 0% unstacking OR a staffing model that requires them to carry enough pilots to prevent that from happening. I think the line in the sand is that MG doesn't want either of those so that the company can continue to understaff the airline to save money.

Again, I'm not an expert, just have a passing knowledge of how it works. There are probably less than a handful of people who know intricately how the back side of the PBS system works, and none of them work for the company lol

As far as SmartPref, maybe you weren't here or missed it somehow. The company and union worked with SmartPref for a couple of years trying to work out a PBS that fit our ridiculous CBA. We would have been the first major airline to utilize SmartPref for their primary bidding software and SmartPref went out of their way to rewrite code to fit (free of charge) our PBS. At the end of the day, they solved the problem and had a completely functional PBS for our CBA and the company said nah, we'll keep CBI. The company was so ****ed that they decided to shut the doors. They even wrote a whole article blasting Allegiant and its culture. If you are one of our pilots, do a quick FB search on the official page for "SmartPref." I don't think the whole article is still available, but in one of the posts about it AW copied a couple of the lines from the article in the text. And if you were really interested, I'm sure someone still has the full article if you ask.

I agree, if you haven't dealt with PBS or taken the time to call AR to have him explain it, it's pretty damn confusing. Hell, it's pretty damn confusing even if you do that. As far as the contract comparison goes, don't know. My guess is that the stuff in the contract comparison is industry standard stuff and a staffing model isn't necessarily industry standard in a way that could be utilized here. SWA is still using line bidding for example. To be fair, I'm not sure how you could do a staffing model here with our base structure. There isn't a staffing model that would cover LAS/SFB and cover TYS/BLI. If we had a system-wide model, the company could still understaff individual bases and overstaff others.

Very telling.

Thank you for posting this. It should be required reading for all of our Pilots. Along with MGs Pre-union emails etc. They shed light on the kind of people that we work for and what they think about us.

what if he doesn’t care about growth?

what if MG has a plan to allow the airline to settle into a steady state that is sustainable under the current contract?

Seriously considering the possibility of the above is a big reason why I left allegiant. I wish you all the best and really hope that I’m wrong but my gut tells me no one on the seniority list has MG cornered.

The biggest thing holding the company back from returning to the “old school” model is aircraft. They could get away with barely flying old, beat down, paid for MD80’s. They can’t do that with the newer airplanes they have which are nowhere near being paid for. That’s why we lost money when everyone else was making money. Our utilization was horrific.

So, what if a new hire is coming here to fly his butt off and upgrade fast. Willing to move to wherever the most junior base is that flies a lot (are those mutually exclusive)?

I don't care about being home every night. I care about making a paycheck that confuses the CAs making less than me, picking up every hour I can when off, and flying 1000 hours by mid November each year and being off in December to go snowboarding in the Alps.

What's the base for me?

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we are hiring for attrition only right now so you won’t move up fast in any base, even the ones like flint or Appleton. However, probably would make the most in a large base with that mindset, but you’d need to be mid seniority which can take years. Las tends to have had more movement than most other recently.

and you won’t upgrade fast in a base you start off at as a new hire. You won’t upgrade at all until there is a new contract which will likely take some time. The company is literally treading water rn.

Thank you. I appreciate this.

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I’ve been here for a year and won’t see the possibility of IND until spring of 2023. I got Cincinnati before I was finished with training but IND is a pipe dream at this point.

in that case expect things to improve when the shareholders wake up and get a new executive suite.

If you are looking for a quick upgrade, this is not the place!

Thank you for the information.

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Here’s your quick upgrade……..

What about old beat down paid for A319s and A320s? The 320 is the new MD80.

All they have to do is sell off the firm Max options. Someone will buy them.

You need to pick a regional and go there.

We have way too many newish aircraft for them to treat the fleet like MD80’s. And they hate the 319, they’ve been vocal about that. They’d like them gone yesterday, but don’t have a replacement for them at the moment. Looks like the MAX7 won’t be it either. Guess we’ll just fly them until they’re ready for the boneyard.

You clearly are new to the airline world and have no idea how FAR 117 works. But good luck getting every December off. If you want to fly that much, go to a regional.

I'm new, but familiar with every rest duty cycle listed in the FAR. While hyperbolic, I'm serious about hitting 1k a year before December's over, and hopefully before November's over.

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Lol. You think Allegiants homegrown CBI will let you get
away with that? You so funny.

What you don't get is that it's a rolling 1000 hours now. So "getting December off" isn't a thing anymore.

But seriously, you need to go work for a regional. You'll upgrade fast, fly your ass off, and make more than you will at G4.

deleted for blathering

At the risk of getting sucked into a troll post, WTF are you blathering about now?

stop wasting your time.

You can lead a horse to water…

But seriously: person thinks they can game the system. They have no idea what they’re in for when it comes to Allegiant. They’re gonna be sitting reserve in a cruddy base getting 15 hours a month on composite.

At this point I hope he actually does come here thinking he's gonna game the system. He deserves the rude awakening that will follow. If he even makes it through initial training with that attitude (they'll notice it immediately).

Evidently not, since it’s a rolling calendar year. I think a regional would be better suited for the amount of flying you will do. I can promise you won’t end up with December off every year though😂

Nicely Said!
Mid seniority at small base: I see a 4 legger once in about 4 months or so. It's not that bad..especially with an inside turn, you don't feel teased coming to the home-base in between.

Does Allegiant offer the ATP-CPT course for those who need it?