You think Frontier is going to buy someone? Who pray tell?

 

 

Anything is possible in this industry.

Don't underestimate Indigo partners.
Indigo owns Frontier.
They were also a major investor in Tiger Airways.
They currently own a piece of Volaris.
They still own major share of Wizz Air.
Previously owned 49% of Russian LCC Avianova.
In the last two years they tried to purchase the majority interest of LOT from the Polish government.
In February of this year started a new upstart ULCC in Chile. Yup started a whole new airline complete with more animals on the tail.

https://www.ch-aviation.com/portal/n...nture-jetsmart

In November of last year Indigo committed to partnering up with the Canadian airline Enerjet. Indigo will help transform them into a ULCC with up to a 25%(limited by Canadian law) stake of the company.

The race is on to launch new ultra-low-cost airline after Canada grants foreign ownership exemptions | Financial Post

Combine the experience above and a CEO that already thinks there will be a consolidation amongst low cost carriers in the US and anything is possible.

http://www.bizjournals.com/denver/ne...ers-ahead.html

 

A couple of weeks ago I was reading my complimentary USA Today and there was front page plus several articles about how women are underpaid by 22% or some. Umber close to that and that there was a national day to pay homage to that fact.

It I occurred to me that most ULCC and LCC A320 pilots in the US are also forced to work for even at a less than 22% discount and this should not sit well as fair to the public. Especially as many of these pilots are routinely asked to do even more with less corporate support than their legacy peers.

Maybe they need their own ribbons/day/USA today front page and series of articles to expose this inequity.

 

Perhaps they figure that even if we get a fast track to a strike (i.e. 6 months, they'll announce the buyout/merger and reset the whole process that way.

 

Having been through a strike myself, I'm not sure there is such a thing under the RLA as a fast track to a strike. Even if the company continues to drag it's feet at every opportunity, the nuclear option is still likely a couple of years away.

 

Indigo only made it through a couple months of mediation with Spirit before negotiations were declared an impasse. Roughly 30days later they were going "nuclear." Which is more pertinent, your experience or Spirit's?

P.S. I thought this thread was closed.

 

That answers a question that I've had for a while. Thank you!

 

I did as well.

But, it's probably a good thing that we have more than 1 thread.
Also, just about every other airline has had a "negotiations" thread of some sort at one time or another. I think Spirit's is still up and running.

 

I was at Spirit when we struck, so I would say my experience with the process is relevant to the discussion. We were in negotiations for around 4 years before we were released to self help last time around. The average time in mediated sessions before reaching an agreement is roughly 22-23 months. We've been in mediated talks for over 7 months this time around with no substantive progress. Our definition of progress and the NMBs opinion of progress is not one in the same. I'm just saying that the whole process unfortunately takes way more time than you'd like to think.