I don’t think we will make it to the cooling off period. We will be forced to concede somewhere in 2030. Just my opinion

its going to be 2026. They’re keeping us one cycle behind everyone else. We’re not getting released. 2030 gave me a good laugh though

They will offer the lowest contract possible (still probably decent) that the NC will get behind and sell it like all NC's do. This is the best you will get, take it or we quit. Clockwork.

The cadet program has its warts...

Many of the cadets only have minimum hours (1500) and there is a company imposed upgrade limit of 1000 hours on property. Some of those cadets won't have 1000 hours when their training contract is up. So, upgrading may suffer. And, AA, DL and SW aren't hiring now. How long will that continue? 2 years? 5? More?

Let's say there's another hiring boom (to replace retirement and growth) in 2027. DL renegotiates their current contract in Jan 2026 - as soon as they sign a new one, all the others snap up. As soon as that happens, apps from EVERY cadet and even junior and some senior level CAs will go out. I woud expect every cadet based closed to a Big 3 base (which is all of our bases except Tampa and San Juan) will leave.

When you can't upgrade people, you can't grow. All the FOs in the world won't help. And how many planes will be on property 2 years from now?

I have no idea if Indigo is looking, but w/o a contract by mid 2026, there's a risk they're assuming that is pretty hazardous.

And, lest we forget, there's a grievance in for the hotels and "bonuses" that were paid out.

Interesting good points. The 1000 hour limit is an FAR though, not company imposed.

Indigo is an investment firm. They seem to have an interest in airline investments but it’s still the same idea. Support financially and get returns. I don’t think they are interested in shouldering the burden of figuring out how to stay competitive with legacies that will be two contract cycles ahead of us.

You know those machines you find at tourist traps where you drop a penny in, crank the handle and out the other side comes your penny squished into an oval shape with some new image stamped on it? That’s what F9 is. Indigo drops their pennies in and they want the little trinket to come out the other side. They aren’t interested in maintaining the machine. They’d rather just get rid of it and buy another one to watch little trinkets drop out.

My opinion is if the airline begins to fail from a drastically substandard contract they will sell.

This is why everyone should vote NO on any contract without a snap up clause. Everyone here would have less thoughts about leaving if they were making close/similar rates as everyone else getting contracts.

If the company wants to keep us a cycle behind, fine. But the snap up will always protect the pay disparity and I feel it is extremely overlooked by most people.

Thankfully, from what I have heard, the NC is wanting a snap up, as it is standard in the industry now.

yeah I don't see anything anywhere in our manuals about a "1,000 hours on property", just the standard 121.436 requirements.

The company was able to get through the 2021 through 2023 legacy hiring boom, and you know that was the biggest hiring boom in our lifetime.

If the company was able to manage pilot staffing through that boom, it will be able to manage through just about anything. Fact is, this remains one of the easiest and most enjoyable ways to earn $100-300k (which is, believe it or not, a lot of money). And so flight schools are as busy as ever. We will have no problem hiring.

As for upgrades, we are nowhere near forced upgrades, so they are managing captain staffing just fine.

As for the next round of legacy contracts, you have an incredibly short memory if you’re assuming that round of contracts will be as lucrative as the last two rounds. The last two contract rounds occurred in historically anomalous times (late 20-teens saw the whiplash effect of the 1500-hour rule; early 2020s saw the legacies trying replace early COVID retirements while simultaneously servicing breakneck growth). The macroeconomic setting in the late 2020s will be different.

The legacies are already seeing real cost pressures. Look at their investor material. You’re a fool if you think Southwest, for example, is going to dump more money into a pilot contract after having laid off thousands of staff. American hasn’t yet taken such drastic action, but even they are complaining that they don’t have the revenue premium to operate with sufficient profitability in this cost environment. Even Delta and United are going to feel some pain as the economy begins to soften.

Sure, continued retirements will mean these new contracts are unlikely to be concessionary. But good times don’t last forever and we’re likely to see a return to some sort of historical average or norm in terms of the evolution of pilot contracts.

F9 will manage pilot staffing just fine.

They want Frontier and Spirit as one. Spit shine it a little and eventually sell out to someone that wants to pay a premium. Timeline is anyone’s guess