What's your quals? Did you have a silver bullet?

 

What's the word on upgrade time and aircraft orders? F9 sounds more and more like Spirit in terms of it's strategy - and that's a good thing since Spirit is doing quite well!

By the way, the current Spirit CEO (Ben Baldanza) formerly worked for the current Frontier CEO (Dave Siegel) at USAirways (pre-America West merger). It's a small world after all.......

 

My buddy is a 121 fo

 

We are presently at 55 aircraft. I believe there are 3 or 4 more A320s coming online in 2015 to replace A319s; however, I've heard they may end up keeping those A319s. We have an order for 80 Airbus A320NEOs with the CFM LeapX motors. Deliveries are tentatively scheduled to start in late 2016. Until then there is no internal or external document with a fleet plan. Since we are privately held that info just sort of pops up last minute. My point is the numbers change all the time.

The big thing that's happening right now is increased fleet utilization, growing central & eastern US focus cities, and it wouldn't surprise me if we hear about a new pilot domicile soon. Additionally the entire fleet will begin receiving new slimline seats sometime in early 2015. Just this week we announced 38 flights/week out of Miami to various cities in our network. Additionally we are going to start going to PHL. We're also drawing down MDW operations and increasing ORD operations in what seems like a pretty big way.

Overall most of the news coming out is positive and exciting because we are clearly growing. Just keep in mind that can be said for pretty much any airline right now. What matters is how well we are positioned when the next downturn hits the industry. Anyone giving you an upgrade time as a potential new-hire is selling you snake oil. There is no way to see that far ahead for any carrier.

 

Are there retirement numbers for F9 published anywhere? They have them for some carriers in the airline profiles, but F9 doesn't have it.

 

There's no mass attrition here with retirements for the foreseeable future. Just a handful/year. We are a pilot group of around 700 and the airline started in 1994 and didn't really get a lot of traction until the late 90s and early 2000. High retirement attrition numbers are only going to be at big carriers that have been around forever and have massive pilot groups.

 

Okay thanks. That's what I assumed but if the number of aircraft on order actually get on property it would definitely be a relatively quick upgrade if you got on now.

 

Wow, that sounds really exciting! Looking forward to my interview. It's nice to see Frontier doing so well!

 

Congrats on the interview DD, let us know how it goes. Good luck in your career.

 

Curious, how often does one break the 82 hour credit threshold? What's a typical month for credit hours?