Upgrade Times - Simple Data
 

I'd like to make a simple post highlighting the number of upgrades over the past 13 months.

Sep '17: 6 upgrades
Oct '17 : 0 upgrades
Nov '17: 0 upgrades
Dec '17: 0 upgrades
Jan '18: 6 upgrades
Feb '18: 12 upgrades
Mar '18: 16 upgrades
Apr '18: 0 upgrades
May '18: 16 upgrades
Jun '18: 0 upgrades
Jul '18: 14 upgrades
Aug '18: 0 upgrades
Sep '18: 6 upgrades

Total upgrades in 13 months: 76.
76 upgrades divided by 13 months = avg 5.8 upgrades per month.

Currently ~ 1300 pilots on the seniority list.

I am fully aware that fleet growth and upgrade times are dynamic. But simple math shows that the 2 year upgrade times that have been touted here by recruiting are not remotely accurate.


Do the math. Educate yourself if you're thinking about a career at Frontier.

www.frontierbadbargain.com

I upgraded at NK when we hit 1250, we were consistently doing 12 a month back then, doing close to 20 since. My math at progression has been pretty good by looking at the delivery schedule, that tells you everything you need to know.

The delivery “schedule” is out the window if the current rumor is true. That rumor being that the FAA is throttling our grown plans.

Exactly. 6 upgrades covers retirements and attrition. These latest upgrades won't hit the line until the January bid. So the company knows that no new aircraft are corning until the spring at best.

The growth here is a charade. Anyone banking on quick upgrades here needs to take notice. I'm a 3 year FO, with a minimum of 2-3 more years to go. I was told 2 year upgrades and a contract right around the corner when I was recruited. All lies.

Expected plane totals:
2018-83
2019-98
2020-113
2021-125
2022-2026-“adding” 134

The problem, they can’t hire pilots. Nobody wants to come here with good reason. It’s only getting worse. Soon there will be 100% of vacations cancelledto fix their problem. When that doesn’t happen then we will see progress on a contract. Until then, we keep living the nightmare that is frontier. The thing is, hopefully pilots don’t jump at their first “reasonable offer” that will be still substandard. We need to stick together and demand the fair contract we deserve. I have no idea why they have delayed this for so long that it is literally destroying this company when they could just pay us and continue printing money at the same time. So when they actually do start to come to the negotiating table, that is when we need to stick our ground and wait till they offer an industry standard contract. It won’t take long because they will be in such a bind at that point that they will have no other choice. Plus that retro check that just keeps building as they continue to kick the can. Their fault, not ours. Stay off the radar and don’t use your phone unless they want to start paying for their use.

Source? Numbers seem right until your last 4 years where (supposedly) we take delivery of 134 airplanes, not have 134 on property.

My bad, adding 134 to the fleet. (100 320 neo’s And 34 321neos’s) Numbers are accurate as of a few days ago.

So wether the company likes it or not, they have to give us a contract to survive. What dingle Barry fails to realize is that the pilots are his biggest assets and could be his biggest cost saving devices. But when he’s guaranteed 22 mil no matter whether he’s fired or let go, let it riiiiiiide. He has no skin in the game. Gets paid regardless. Industry standard and retro. No more, no less

We’ve all been told the same line to get us in here. I could have held the last 3 staffing awards as Capt but instead have been updating my resumes for real Airlines. That should give and idea to the new hires. Upgrade or be a pilot at a company that actually values you instead of considering you a cost index. Make your choice. Hopefully I have departure news soon. Your not right in the head if you wanna come here right now.

I don’t know how I forgot this...

But a buddy told me (from somebody else) that new somebody... see where I’m going?

The newest thing is we are about to run a program for restricted ATP pilots, starting in December. Yes. You might fly with a guy with less than 1500 hrs.

We all know where this is heading... new captains and new private pilots(basically) carrying 230 pax... just wait for the inevitable...

So WHY IS ALPA NOT PROMOTING THIS AND GOING TO NEWS OUTLETS WITH THIS? Safety #1? Bs. This needs to get out to the public

Yep you are exactly right “need a real job”. Most of my class is thinking the very same way. We all came to F9 from crappy regionals, we were hopeful that F9 would work out. If it didn’t we would punch out. Well, now most of my class is updating apps. Four have already left. More will soon.

The training department would never allow that. Plus, we are still doing the hiring, not the company.

Well I’ll sit back and wait for your apology because it’s happening right now. Btw, they are already trying to push the pilots out of the process. Things are getting bad. If you didn’t know this, then you are unaware of a lot of bs headed our way

I got to admit that I'm surprised the company has allowed our hiring board to continue being so selective. If I were in upper management, I'd force the hiring board to up the percentage of offers.

There was one day when they interviewed 5 (qualified) pilots and didn’t hire a single one. I’m sure they said they’d leave as soon as they got called from a legacy. On a side note, RR is no longer a part of the recruitment department after that YouTube video came out. I guess the Union was upset he was wearing an ALPA pin. And the Union also was upset that they mentioned us throwing bags and pushing wheelchairs in the recruitment video when that is not a part of our job description nor do we have the proper training. They may have filed a grievance.

If you step in $hit then you smell like $hit. The guy you work for is a piece of $hit. He's pimping the pilots and using the system against you.

That’s very profound. Yoda, you are.

It is, indeed, happening. The first few start next month; the camel’s nose is now under the tent.

Enjoy!

I don’t doubt this. But until HR also administers check rides and IOE it is incumbent on our training department to uphold the standard. I don’t care if our washout rate is 99% I expect them to not compromise safety.

There is no new program. The restricted ATP license has been in place since the inception of the rule, allowing one to get an ATP with less than 1500 hours. Military, 4 year degree, 2 year degree, etc... Nothing new here, other than the fact they are hiring people right at mins.

Up to the training department to make sure they pass. Some super senior DEN captains here that are terrible pilots with a huge no fly list. Some young bucks here that are outstanding. I love how you guys came from some crap prop job when you couldn't get hired by a legacy, living in DEN and are now Airbus capts acting holier than thou about a rule that wasn't even in place when you were hired.

I’ve commented to a couple of my contemporaries lately that I’m amazed at how my “pilot” job has evolved at F9.

These days, I spend about 5% of my mental energy flying the plane with the rest being spent trying to keep this ongoing dumpster fire of an operation from causing death and devastation.

On nearly every leg, I find myself resisting outward pressures to ignore significant deficiencies just to keep the operation moving. I find it ironic that our most recent FOM modification requires that we discuss “threats” to the operation when the operation itself (and the enormous untrained change in SOPs via the aforementioned FOM revision) are almost always the biggest threats we’ll encounter.

I consider myself fortunate to have had nearly 8000 hours of rightseat F9 Airbus time before I upgraded a little over 4 years ago. I also appreciate the fact that many (most) of the FO’s that I flew with when I first upgraded were also very experienced in the Airbus.

What concerns me now is that we’ve got new captains who have minimal time in the Airbus combined with minimal time in the F9 system who are facing the most dorked up operation anyone can fathom... who will now be paired with new FOs who may have zero or almost zero 121 time or jet time.

This isn’t a dig against the new guys. Everyone was once inexperienced. It’s not their fault. It also doesn’t change the facts... they’re inexperienced. The reason we’re contemplating hiring inexperienced folks is that anyone with any experience at all won’t come to work for this ****hole at the wages we’re offering.

If safety really was even in the top 5 on our corporate priority list, we’d raise wages to attract appropriately experienced pilots.

Flame suit on...

We should hope, but it doesn't inspire confidence when a member(s) of the training department helps produce a propaganda video that this a COMPLETE LIE and the sole purpose of the video is to undermine our pilot group's effort to achieve industry standard pay and benefits.



SPOT ON!

The question is why are you still there young Jedi?? Battered Wife Syndrome? If you can't figure it out then you get what you deserve... Trust me that's what Frankie tells himself about his employees. Learn self respect!!

This is out of line, in my opinion.

Why is he still there? Why did you stay at Spirit through the negotiations and lawsuit against the pilots? Do you have "self respect?" Probably because you have a family and they depend on a paycheck, as does this guy. Its very hypocritical to say something like you did, while walking in your bright yellow shoes. You have less time at Spirit than this guy does at Frontier, why didn't you leave Spirit as a junior FO and seeing how our negotiations began and dragged on?

Franke would love guys to leave, replace them with cheaper labor. Resolve is staying unified and working towards an ultimate, and inevitable, contract.

Excellent post:cool:

God forbid that any airline should ever again have a major accident but history teaches that they will. All of the current legacies have - at some time - had disastrous mishaps. Despite air travel in the US being literally safer per passenger mile than any other mode, even exceedingly rare events do happen.

One has to wonder, were such a mishap to happen at Frontier though, how much of the blame would be attributed - rightly or wrongly - to the NMB simply being negligent in doing their job. Quite a bit more than many on the NMB think, would be my guess. Nor would Frontier as a company necessarily survive. Not with postings such as the above serving as admissions against interest for any civil actions.

It seems to me both management and the NMB are playing with fire.

No blame would be on the NMB.

Correct. All blame would fall on the company. It’s like running a low income rental house and not repairing the gas leak because your to cheap to fix it.

Or in the case of Valujet, mainly on their "business partner".

Unofficially.... Fourteen scheduled to show up for interviews on Monday and three showed up. The rest were no-shows. Not even a call to cancel.

Valid and thoughtful points made. This is very encouraging to read,. Nice to read posts on from someone with good light on their head. Vs the very grumpy and arrogant responses & bickering I read from the Spirit forum folks. Not as terrible of a read or as terrible a quality of individuals here than the Spirit forum comes off to be. Just my personal observation and opinion. Y’all are def not as bad.

I’m highly positive one way or the other, things will work out great for the Frontier Pilot group.

Just a message to our new Purdue Restricted ATPs that will be joining us in December.

The decision on whom is pilot flying for each leg is at the Captain’s discretion. And it is my belief that Restricted ATPs are inherently unsafe as they chose to skip both the regional and corporate worlds; in other words, you need more time to watch because I’m not going to be your IOE instructor. I won’t say you’ll never fly, but for me possible disqualifiers include but are not limited to: winds 5kts or greater, falling precipitation, night-time, mountainous terrain, wake turbulence near large airports, ceilings below 5,000ft, visibility below 10sm, and high traffic congestion. These safety restrictions will remain in effect throughout your probationary year at Frontier.

Thank you for acting as a crutch to a crippled hiring process, we don’t know what we would have done without you.

I had heard about our supposed hiring of R-ATP pilots, but had not heard any more details. Is this accurate that we are hiring R-ATP's from Purdue? Do we know how many so far have been hired? Am I correct in assuming that they are going straight from CFI-ing to Frontier??

Upgrade Times - Simple Data
 

Wait, isn’t history repeating its self? Did this not happened decades ago in the 1970’s with newly branded civilian commercial pilots @ 250hrs flying big, fast, more complicated systems jets than we have now?

Speak with any UAL Pilots, Golden Boys Pilots from Northwest Airlines (now Delta), or AA old-timers now retiring. Ask these greatest generation pilots now retiring what the hiring environment was like in the days. Ask them how many hours they needed to have to get hired in the late 1970’s early 1980’s, after the “Military Pilot Pool” were depleted. The people many are complaining about now have far more hours than those from the civilian ranks then now retiring. Ok, I granted many were 727 Flight Engineers, but many were also hired straight into the right seat of a mainline aircraft. Training & Safety systems have improved, as, Crew Concepts introduced and evolved. Automation removed many Second Officer positions, reduced workload, and increased Situational Awareness. Pubs and approaches improved, clean clear concise communications, ATC radar and awareness and training improvements, Phraseology improvement, technology, processes, simplified procedures. Easier to read EPC, QRH, CHECKLIST, IPads EFB programs and publications.

Not everyone is a square trying to fit in a circle kinda stupid. Not everyone who goes to an LLC “has some kind of ding on their record or training issues.”

We are in the age of “Train to Proficiency.” A proven philosophy that has worked in this industry at-least 1 generation prior to the current.

You will not die, you will get use to it. You will be assimilated and adjust to the changing times. History is only repeating its self.

Things suck now for many, but will get better really soon one way or the other. You guys are great! Keep fighting!

I can understand your anger and frustration with your current situation. I think it should be aimed mainly at management. I would definitely have taken the opportunity to bypass working a crappy regional or corporate if I could have back in 1999. I think you would have too. If you want to feel better about your job, the only thing IMO would be a different company for you. You can hold reserve on a widebody FO at 3rd year at any legacy, and make more than a 12 year captain at F9. Seniority progession is faster because of more retirement. Maybe your company wasn't a total POS when you joined, but it is now, and guess what, that is not the fault of some clueless 23 year old who is just trying to pay off his massive loan. I was a captain at a company that started hiring frozen ATPLs with 185 hours. Yes, you had to take that into consideration when assigning PF/PNF. Your attitude is wrong and unsafe, treating your fellow crew member like that will ensure he won't be there for you when you need him/her.

Which cubicle do you work from at the GO...the same building we are not allowed?

Captains need a do not fly list no R-ATP.......
COME ON ALPA

Can anyone prove that we are actually hiring sub 1500hr guys, or are we just totally making sh*t up again?

I spoke with a friend that was in ground school last month and this information came from the CP briefing.

What part of my post makes you think I am F9 office? I am a captain at NK, live in Denver, and thought I would end up at F9 (not UA material apparently). I follow what is going on, and feel bad for what is going on, I just think there was some misdirected anger in that post.

What’s been made up?