So i was in Den today driving from downtown to DIA and didn’t see one single billboard making the public aware of how far F9 lags.

Neither have I seen a single TV ad making it known to the public how far behind you lag

Moving along to the terminal….again not one billboard bring attention to an overdue contract.

if that isn’t enough…..not one hand out of informational flyers to those in line boarding F9 flights.

Furthmore……no organized effort on the unions part for resume review and interview prep for legacies

WHY not any of this??

All of what I’ve mentioned is LEGAL and within the bounds of the RLA.

 

That would actually be hilarious

 

we aren’t getting a contract when our airline is not making any money period

 

That actually happened during the last round. I imagine at some point it will be part of the strategy again.

 

I wouldn't expect that under our current MEC. I can't say why but the actions MM seems to be willing to take are limited to Memos, podcasts and Airport sits. Any other action seems to come to late, or not at all. All the money spent seems to go to things of limited effectiveness. Bus, Window shades ,Family awareness events. Some how the war chest is empty or at least the will to genuinely pressure management simply does not exist. I don't see that changing under MM.

I am open minded. Anyone who feels differently please feel free to post a list of MM's accomplishments. I am sure there is something ,but my mind is drawing a blank.

 

How do we recall our current MEC and put this guy in charge?

You have my vote.

 

It seems like you want to speed up your airline's demise. Salaries are 25-30% of revenue, your largest fixed/semi-fixed cost by far, and even with the contract being well below competitors, Frontier can't turn a profit or generate any cash. And now, not only do you think that the airline is in position to raise your salaries significantly, but you want to do so by starting a public fight??

Btw, consumers don't really care about how much their pilots earn, and Frontier pilots earn enough that nobody is going to feel sorry for them anyway. The fact that your union reps aren't doing this is proof that you have levelheaded, reasonable reps who don't want to burn the whole thing down like you seemingly do. Would you rather have a 20% higher salary and then have your airline go under in a few quarters, or the status quo, and hope the airline can survive for longer?

And also, while I have tremendous respect for all commercial pilots, this idea that pilots are the backbone of the airline isn't quite accurate...passengers just want to get from point A to point B safely, and have enough faith in the FAA (and most governmental organizations worldwide), that they don't do due diligence on specific pilots or airlines from a pilot training perspective. With a standardized union contract, pilots are essentially a commodity, and are easily replaceable (usually for cheaper, given how seniority works!) There is no pilot shortage, and plenty of younger guys at various 91/135/regionals who would be happy to take your seat. Where is your negotiating leverage?

 

While I’m more than happy to be at a legacy now, I absolutely hate the attitude people like you take towards pilots bargaining at LCCs/ULCCs. It’s quite disgusting. Look up how pattern bargaining works before you start spewing that nonsense

 

I'm anti most unions, nothing against LCCs...not a commercial pilot nor do I pretend to be btw. I know how pattern bargaining works, I'll give you a few examples, and then address the US airline industry at the end:

1. US steel industry: pattern bargaining led to higher wages and no incentive to be efficient or cost-competitive, and was a significant driver of the demise of the US steel industry as Asian imports flooded the market with lower-cost product. There were 500k steel workers in the US in the 50s, 150k in the 80s, and 80k today. The US moved from a net exporter of steel to a net importer, reliant on other countries.

2. US auto industry: pattern bargaining led to higher wages and no incentive to be efficient or cost-competitive, and was a significant driver of the demise of the US auto industry as Asian imports flooded the market with lower-cost product. There were 600k unionized auto workers in the US in the 80s, 200k pre-GFC, and 140k today. The US moved from a net exporter of autos to a net importer, reliant on other countries. Total US auto workers have fallen, but not as drastically, as the majority of US auto jobs today are jobs under foreign companies that have plants in the US. Those firms specifically set up shops in states that had laws to allow them to avoid unionization. This contributed significantly (along with the above details on the steel industry) to the decline of the rust belt and ascent of the sunbelt.

3. US trucking industry: pattern bargaining led to higher wages and no incentive to be efficient or cost-competitive, and with mobsters running the unions and no ability to import a service as the US did with physical products, rates were regulated at inflated levels, passing the cost on to the consumer. After deregulation, prices fell 30+%, and consumers benefitted.

4. Scandinavian manufacturing industry: pattern bargaining was taken a step further by mandating equal wages across industries, and firms that could not meet productivity targets necessary to support those wages would fail. Firms were incentivized to invest in automation and efficiency, and while prices still ended up higher than what overseas competitors could offer, quality was an actual differentiating factor, allowing many industrial manufacturing companies to thrive, although at the expense of potential start-ups who couldn't compete in such capital intensive industries without offering a significant portion of compensation in the form of stock/options/warrants like international (esp. US) companies could. This can be argued as a positive outcome, unlike the above 3 which are uniformly negative.

If a system like the Scandinavian system (or one where pattern bargaining worked and all commercial pilots were paid the ~same) were enacted in the case of the US airline industry, it would simply mean LCCs wouldn't exist today, and start-ups wouldn't have been created...we would have a 4/5 company oligopoly, and prices would skyrocket, undoing the enormous impact that de-regulation had. The routes hit hardest would be the leisure routes and smaller market routes that LCCs frequent, disproportionately hurting lower and middle class consumers. I totally understand LCC pilots wanting to be paid the same as their peers, especially given that the average LCC pilot is just as good as the average legacy pilot, and a lot of this just comes down to luck. But that is not a sound economic or financial model.

Anyway, I'm not going to opine anymore on this specific topic b/c it's not my place, and I understand that many posts on here are just to reasonably vent. Thought the financial reality should be posted once.

 

Yep not making any money yet some how Indigo is buying up airline all over the world. We don't have any money but we can pay to be over staffed, we can clearly afford high attrition. In fact we saved so much money on hotels we need to have pilots stay in hotels for 24+hrs for some reason. Cash was really tight so they could only afford to give the first year FO's a raise.

I am tired of these arguments. I was told this exact thing throughout my flying career. Time makes fools of us all, but when I hear this argument and think about what has happened in the last ten years. Time and Time again over and over reality has shown THAY DO HAVE THE MONEY they always had the money. the Problem is they rather spend it on something else. That is the prevailing attitude until their profits are threatened. Then suddenly and we find out they do have them Money. and that they always had the money. You want proof Bid for reserve and WITNESS the actions of crew scheduling. It will not take long for you to figure out that this is not an organization that is short on resources. Dysfunctional yes but apparently they can afford to be dysfunctional. That is what our low pay rates provide. excessive staff, the ability to staff any flying with premium in minutes and the ability to squander resources with some of the most ridiculous assignments imaginable. no need or even effort to improve schedule efficiency. These are not actions of a company under any financial pressure. If Indigo was genuinely not making any profit they would have sold Frontier a long time ago. Yet here we are. The difference between what you read in a book and what you see in reality. They should be the same , but they are not. Information has been used to control people for a long time. Which is fine with good info we all can make sound decisions the problem is your not getting good info. your getting the info that will make you fall in line drinking the koolaid so to speak.

This company will send any one of us down the river in a hart beat. As far as I am concerned they can pull it together and figure out how to pay us or they can sell us. I don't care ,but I am not going to finance this kind of incompetency with my labor for the rest of my career

Also please tell me that you do not work for the F9 Union.