Ok, truce. I guess I was responding to Pilot41's opine, sorry. You're right, using APC numbers at 75 hr guarantee 1st yr. CAL is $27.0K vs. F9 $33.3K, it is a substantial diff.

Have a good week!?

 

"Rumor has it that F9 will not survive another year with oil prices being where they are.. they have to be bought or just end up in bankruptcy"

Not going to argue with that, I'm scrambling looking for another job. It takes time, so much time..

 

"The airline will not survive another year. Sinking ship. Failing airline. The SWA hammer is getting ready to drop." All of these wonderful posts, and 50% of them say we should have asked for more pay. Why? So the company can turn around and ask for it back when it really hits the fan? Does any one see a problem with this type of logic? Your airline is failing, you should bleed it dry on the way out? We asked for a better QOL in scheduling and work rules, we feel that we are doing our part to help the company we enjoy working for survive. We are far from being in the gutter for pay here. Yes first year FOs took a pay hit from $51 to $37. No one on property took that hit. It was only pilots hired after the signing. $37 is still better than the majority of first year pay at most major airlines. As far as B scale goes, that ends in Jan 08. Everyone will be on the same pay rate at that time. Second year pay is on par with everyone else in the industry. This company is going through tough times with oil prices being the way they are, but what airline is not. Even mighty SWA is not immune to this issue. $100/bbl oil is a scary thing, especially when you are planning on it being around $70 for your quarter. UAL planned on $50/bbl oil when it submitted its bankruptcy exit plan to the judge, and Tilton is a former oil man. The point is, no one knows where your airline will be in the future. You never know if you made the right decision until the day you retire from the airline you picked to work for. Did the Pan Am guys really ever think that they would be gone? You buckle in and try to ride it out and hope for the best. I am in no way saying that you should bend over and take whatever the company gives, you still have to house and feed your family. But everyone, including management has a responsibility to help their company succeed. I believe the pilot group here has done that. And the first year guys should understand that when they take the job. This company is fighting for its survival, and when it makes it, the pilot group should be rewarded.

 

Contrary to what you may believe, pilot pay has never sent an airline out of business. If an airline goes out of business, they were going out regardless of what they paid their pilots. At the same time, pilot pay has never saved an airline. Airlines pass and fail on bad fundamentals. Pilots could have worked for free at failed airlines and the outcome would have been the same. It may buy you an extra week. Now the airline will say pilot pay is the reason their airline is in trouble when in fact the real reason that airline may be in trouble is because their management didn't know what they were doing.

 

Good luck with that. When the sh*t hits the fan, all airline management is the same. They can make it seem like they care about you when times are good. I know you may point back to 01 when you guys took cuts temporarily and got contract improvements not long after that. F9 was better off then and things were looking way up in DEN. Most folks had mistakenly written UAL off and SWA in DEN wasn't even being talked about. These times for f9 don't compare to 01. It's getting thick for many airlines right now but I wish you guys luck.

 

I just recalculated my actual first year gross pay at F9 using the current (new) rate. I only averaged 70 hours a month and I would have made $43,000.

My second year pay (while also doing my best to fly 70 hours a month) came in at just over $78,000 gross.

There are better and there are worse, but I am damn happy to be here and work with a lot of folks that love their job, our passengers and our airline.

 

Have to agree with 89P here, management is the problem/solution. Pilot concessions are a bandaid for large problems.

Didn't SW just increase to 7 gates in DEN? I think they started with 2.

 

I hope SWA turns you guys down, since you guys have turned down many worthy applicants with a 737 type.

I guess it worked out for those guys who were turned down b/c they had the ablility to fly something that isn't an airbus.

 

What are you talking about dude? Hope WN turns us down? Ability to fly something that isn't a bus... Yeah, we all started our careers in an Airbus. *** bro, you better watch what you put out there... Karma has a strange way of stinging your a$$. Just be cool & everything will work out. Why wish ill will on your bro's?

 

I've seen Frontier turn down some great guys just b/c they had a 737 type. I don't think that is right. One of my buddies interviewed and the first words out of the interviewers mouth were: "So you've got a 737 type? We don't fly 73's here at Frontier."

Kinda sets a bad tone for the interview.

His SWA interview was 2 weeks later.

You're right Karma is strange, strange enough to bite those with a bus type who interview at a non bus airline.