Powderkeg

Ignore him, he doesn’t work for F9. He’s surely upset about terrible scope, a painful merger, impending doom, or an ex-wife ruining his life. He’s Alaska’s problem, not yours. “All aboard for Trenton”, I say!

TurboFanMan

^^^^^Plus 1^^^^^^

Aviatormar

looooove Trenton- we gotta make a killin there!

TOGALOCK

Does anyone have the latest on Frontier's share of the loan money? How much and have we taken the money yet? American just cashed out on their loan, so I'm wondering if we (or either of the other two airlines that signed letters of intent) have done the same.

putzin

https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/seven-airlines-close-billions-of-dollars-in-loans-with-treasury

According to this the loans have closed.

dracir1

Or more importantly...

Why are we COLA-0ing people if we took money?

Excargodog

This was, IIRC at LIBOR plus 3%, which is a lot better than AA did selling Junk Bonds in Aug at 12%.

DrJekyll MrHyde

Those are separate loans associated with the original CARES act, but not the grants that restrict furloughs. And technically, since our union agreed to allow COLA-0, they’re not actually furloughing anyone.

dracir1

I love how we've turned the COLA-0 thing into a non-furlough. Yes, you are correct. Because the pilots who receive NO PAY still maintain health, flight and a few other benefits, they are technically not furloughed. How about we go with employees who aren't paid...

And with the above new term, regardless of what the loans are or are not associated with, is there another purpose that the company has to accept money OTHER than to pay those employees? Is that money to go toward aircraft leases? Gate fees? Into the pocket of Franke to recoup losses already experienced?

What other reason could be more important than paying labor that just got laid off (w/ a few benefits)?

DrJekyll MrHyde

To be fair, this agreement that includes COLA-0s is only for the period of time starting after the furlough restrictions expire 01OCT (as a condition of accepting funds from the original CARES grants). The company told the union that absent any further grant money that they would need to furlough X amount of pilots and the union worked out mixed benefits for the junior pilots to ensure they kept health benefits even if they couldn’t keep everyone at work with voluntary COLAs by senior pilots. Any CARES-like grants accepted by the company moving forward will trigger a 7-day negotiations with our union and without a new agreement the LOA dies and everything snaps back pre-displacements and all. This keeps the company from keeping pilots under the same agreement on COLA-0 while taking additional grant money; unless the union by some act of pure stupidity agreed to it in their negotiations.

And the original CARES loans, that we now know they accepted, are just loans with good terms; there are no protections for labor. The company won’t be taking on additional loan debt to keep paying pilots to not fly unless it’s in the company’s near-term financial interests to do so. Good-will is so far down their list it’s irrelevant. And it appears the company is doing everything on a conservative near-term strategy, which might be the best long-term job insurance our pilot group could hope for right now.