How long for a contract?
 

It’s seems like senior captains in the 8-10 year range and FOs in the 1-2 year range are jumping ship faster than we could recruit them. Just wondering is there light at the end of the tunnel here or are we in full blown Stockholm? No airline got a contract under 3 years with the exception of UPS and their TA extension. Will we be the exception?

With this management group and Indigo, I think we both know the answer. Hope for the best, expect the worse. Like many have said, if you’re on the fence whether or not to join a legacy, waiting to see what our contract will look like, don’t wait, go.

Notable is UPS union is not ALPA, not APA.

Most union guys I talk to are pretty intent on thinking it will be end of winter/early spring.

The company came to the table with stuff in hand. They are losing a lot of employees. Lots of money. Lots of investors starting to question them hard. Metrics are in the toilet.

There is no way we get one that fast. Just no feasible way with these people.

Unfortunately I agree. Just add two years to the estimates

I want to see the pictures of the new strike bus. There was a teaser about a month ago but haven’t seen anything since. Unless it’s in my mailbox with my lanyard :)

I heard the bus is going to have Wi-Fi so they can still get lightning fast flica alerts for premium.

What stuff in hand? Concessions?

That.Is.Classic....

I spit out my triple shot cappuccino !

5+ minimum

129 aircraft out of 136 planned this year. 2037 pilots on Flica. Depending on how many pilots one thinks we need per airplane we are starting to get very close to understaffed. Then what? Then how long will this contract take?

How many are going to be down with engine issues or how many are going to be delayed? Last I heard yall are overstaffed from my f9 friends. I'm asking as I have a family member who just got hired at F9 and want to see what you all think. As for a contract I'd be surprised if it comes in less than 2 years. That would be one of the fastest full contracts negotiated, ever. I used to fly for an indigo company and I think I'm safe in saying they don't negotiate anything quickly.

believe I saw some where that Frontier does not use "Pilots per plane" as staffing model BUT the math up until now worked out to around 15 per plane.

I’m pretty sure we are understaffed. That is why we are dead-heading CAs and FOs all over the country, financing our competition paying for those full-fare, non-ULCC tickets. That to me is a sore sign of being understaffed pilots.

Engine issues have 0% affect on us. Sometimes the god of revenue shines on a carrier.

edit: the previous engine issues involving P&W. Airbus delays are another story….

is our fleet of PW engines even old enough to be having these issues already?

I thought spirit had issues with them, because their fleet is several years older.
We just started getting ours back in November.

Didn’t you guys just rush though a new contract or something last year? Or was that spirit or JetBlue. Only thing I remember was some garbage being slammed in for a merger?

You're thinking of Spirit.

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

you may be truthful. Only problem is you’re a unicorn. Most others want what I want.

if flexibility is so good, why do we have the attrition rate we have?

Pay rates and flexibility are probably roughly equally weighted in people's decisions to stay or go.

We must protect our QOL/flexibility while achieving pay rates in the ballpark of the legacies to stem attrition

There’s two unicorns because I’m a no vote if we give up drop/swap.

so there are levels of QoL as it pertains to trading, etc.

Drop/swap is necessary. I’m a no voter if we lose that as well. But keeping it with subpar rates are gonna mean the same thing for our future - we won’t grow at all.

it is DENIED most of the time ………

It could only be denied 4 (2 of 4 are even) of 30 days las captain for September right now and 2 of the next 6 for august. And las is a mess right now. That’s nowhere near most of the time. Stop trying to give away provisions please.

Exactly right. Pilots need to stop worrying about the companies job to staff and grow.

I don’t believe they want us to give it up. I’m fairly confident they want to tie it to res coverage. Right now it’s not outside 48 hrs. Your res coverage is not my problem when trade/drop/swap. That is the most important provision to keeping the grid clean on most days. Especially during meltdowns where a ton of res are used. It’s a provision that most carriers don’t have. Most are tied to a res grid.

Bold strategy cotton, interestingly enough, we have yet to have one pilot leave a legacy to become a flexible frontier pilot. As I’m watching former frontier pilots already upgrade at the legacies in record time. Are legacies closing their ORD base on a whim and the pilots find out from internet blog sites, no. That was here. Pilots lives completely uprooted by management. Sounds like an awesome display of flexibility.

what I’m saying is why give up something that is already under company control…….. CONCESSION STAND CLOSED….