From what I heard, our airplanes have the updated engine parts so we should not be having those issues of the PW engines that are just a couple years older than ours.

I will try and find the article.

 

Thanks, I have a hard time keeping some of this stuff straight.

 

I actually think the Spirit contract is going to be a point of contention in our contract negotiations.

Everyone needs to understand what and why they did what they did.

After the agreement to merge with JetBlue, and in an attempt to try and slow down attrition, Spirit and Management agreed to a quick little pay raise contract. It was really just an extension of their old contract with higher pay rates. It's a short term deal until a joint contract can be negotiated between B6/NK. If the merger is not approved by the DOJ, Spirit will immediately return to negotiate a new, full contract.

Spirit agreed to a short term deal with very mediocre pay raises but with the promise of a future contract in the new future. (either a joint one with JetBlue or a full, new one if they stay independent)

The problem for us is that Frontier will definitely look at those pay rates and say "that's your 'peer group'

Everyone needs to be crystal clear that we can't look at those rates ($306/ hr for 12th year ca) as a comparison. The circumstances of their deal cannot be confused with what we are working towards. Obviously our union understands this but don't be surprised if we see a video from BL talking about Spirit and peer groups.

Btw, Spirit has admitted that the contract (pay raises they gave) hasn't done much or anything to stem attrition. If Frontier wants to seriously show down the attrition, they will need to pay a market rate for pilots.

 

Very clear they are not serious as they asked for concessions on day 1 of negotiations.

 

A concession implies giving something up without gaining anything else. Assuming you’re talking about swap/drop etc, they didn’t ask for a concession. They asked to bring us in line with the rest of the industry. Which is also what we are asking for in regards to pay and benefits. We can either accept industry standard pay and industry standard scheduling flexibility (or lack thereof) or accept less somewhere else to keep our flexibility. I’m not being a company sympathizer or Debbie-Downer but this is how a mediator is going to look at it.

 

The fact that there are some people here who honestly think that this will be a quick negotiation is completely laughable.

 

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ spot on!

 

Valid points. For what it’s worth, IF I had to choose, I’d keep the flexibility. There are so many people here who have never flown 121 before that I’m nervous we may end up going to an industry standard reserve-based drop/swap (aka: DENIED). I’d personally prefer to keep our flexibility even if it came with a lower hourly rate. I don’t believe that it is as much of an issue as they make it out to be though. Until lately (due to all of the premium flying) when a pilot dropped a trip into open time it was sucked up within 30 seconds (yes literally).

 

No no no!!!

Don't get me wrong, I LOVE the flexibility. But you can't put that in APC under the pay rates column. NO ONE IS COMING HERE for the flexibility. In fact, guys who have it are leaving. We need the RATES. We need to get paid - even if we have to give up some of the QoL items - just to be competitive w/ other airlines. Otherwise, we stagnate. And that wonderful flexibility is lessened by the fact that there are no upgrades, there's no open time and PAF is a desperate measure in the 11th hour that requires guys to be online 24/7 just to get it. Rates are king in this world.

TBH, there really should be no reason why we can't have the rates AND the flexibility. Imagine a AA pilot leaving for F9...

A competent CEO could manage this. Hell, he'd be PROUD to.

 

I came here for the flexibility. I turned down interviews at legacies because qol is more important to me than money. Keeping (hopefully improving) our flexibility is worth giving up money. Lots of money is useless if you aren’t able to be home with those you care about it. We should be able to get our pay rates real close to the legacies and keep the qol, but either way we need qol