I get that, but frontier is currently not profitable and forecast to continue that way. It will be an uphill battle getting increases. Every other industry declines raises during times they are not profitable.

Not our job to worry about the profitability of the company. And I bet most ALPA folk would say the same thing. Just like MX, and marketing, and route structure, etc etc are not our problem. A couple of quarters of negative return are not a reason to take a substandard contract.

How much $$$$ did Frank’s and Indigo make with F9? Didn’t they like quadruple their ROI? AERO1900 would know.

If anyone feels we won’t get a good contract because of bad quarters, then by that same logic we should have an industry leading contract by how much money Indigo made off their original purchase.

EDIT: Also no one at any of those legacies gave a shart how indebted those companies were/are when it came to their contracts. Or how many billions they lost during COVID. They would say the same thing:
not our problem, FUPM.

From what I understand the process takes up to five years. No sense even speculating. Frontier may not even exist as it does today five years from now.

I mean look, a couple of good airline accidents, with fatalities, and who knows who exists in 5 years. Arguably, the industry is probably overdue for one anyways.

Also, these guys never share when the times are good and they’re making money hand over fist. Aren’t we like the only company now without profit sharing? Another reason to not take anything substandard and have to live with it for years.

Indigo bought Frontier from Republic in 2013 for an almost unbelievable $36 Million. There was some debt they took over in that deal but they only paid 36 Million. Today, Frontier is worth $900 million (market cap), down dramatically from the IPO, but only a small portion of the company was put on the stock market. They currently sit on almost $700 Million in cash and that's after many rounds of executive bonuses and payouts. Our market cap should be about 3 Billion but the stock price has been absolutely crushed recently.

But to answer you question, yes, Indigo made a killing by buying Frontier

We exist for the sole purpose of making the stake holders money. We are just gears in the money making machine and we pick up the scraps that fall from the table. And I'm ok with that if the executive staff would at least pretend to play the game of caring about the pilot group and their customers. Their decisions are really puzzling and seem to threaten their cash cow at every turn. There is so much broken with the airline and yet they add more issues to the pile by going off in some new direction. If your check engine light comes on and your engine is running rough, that's not your queue to go get a new paint job.

this is exactly what O’Brien and the teamsters said about Yellow trucking: if you can’t afford to pay [insert top of scale rate] then you don’t belong in the trucking business.

I hope yall don’t turn into Yellow trucking because it didn’t work out well for them.

UPS truckers got their historic raises but the IBT sacrificed Yellow truck drivers to get there.

I think just like any other industry, there is a pay range for any given position. While I am not in the “not a penny less” camp, I believe we need to be in range…and right now, we aren’t close.

To use your example, if Yellow trucking couldn’t afford to pay their drivers within the industry range, then no, they shouldn’t have been in the trucking industry.

If F9 can’t afford to pay their pilots within industry range, same thing. They don’t really have a choice. If you don’t pay employees what they’re worth within a reasonable margin, you aren’t going to have employees and your company will fail anyway.

like others have said, we are not paid to ensure the company is profitable, we are paid to fly planes…safely, efficiently, and all that jazz…..and just like the people who ARE paid to make sure the company is profitable, the position has a cost associated with it.

This, instead of paying your most important asset less than industry standard. Reduce your poor CEOs and VPs pay and give it to the people who actually matter, since they have steered us to sub $4 share price.