The thing is though, Franke is a smart old man who has seen eeeeverything in the airline industry. He knows exactly what he's doing. He knew IPO wasn't going to happen this year around April/May. He started strong in Jan/Feb padding our schedule by an obscene amount, jumping out on time performance to number 4. (I made it a personal goal to be home by schedule block in.) But as soon as he knew the market wasn't going maximize his capitalization, he bailed. He knew Denver was going to melt down and he doesn't care. Biffle would be looking for another job right now if Denver was some sort of "surprise". Currently it's all maximizing Indigo's dividends until next year, or the year after when he sees fit.

Pilots? Warm bodies. Plenty of those at every street corner. What Repubic (that's for Bedford and IBT, not the pilots) did is something completely different. Those that appear smart, intelligent, some sort of charisma and a good resume for the legacies? Move along, you are not welcome here.

 

While I agree that Franke is probably smart and knows what he's doing, I question if he comprehends how quickly the market for pilots is changing. He probably all too fondly remembers the days of pilots needing 3000 hours of TPIC to get looked at by the regional. The pay to play and the thousands of pilots willing to accept any flying job no matter the compensation.

Of course, they can just drag out negotiations until it's immediately apparent that they can't fill classes, and then cave in. For them to offer raises a day before they have to, they are leaving money on the table. And for now, they are still easily filling classes.

 

The pilot shortage isn't going to happen at our F9's level for a long time. I still have regional guys coming up to me in the terminal asking about a job. Even when I try to discourage them I hear, "well every airline's management is like yours" or "but it's a two year upgrade". If F9 has trouble filling classes they can just drop the requirements to FAA mins. Might cost them a little more for insurance but still cheaper than giving us a raise.

If anything Frontier likes it when people leave after a year or two. Second year pay is $28 an hour more than first year. They still save money even with training.

 

So only 1 aircraft is going to be delivered in 2017? Has that always been the case?

 

NO, 2 year upgrades here, just false promises. And we are making 80-100/per hour less than our peers!!!!!!!

 

That's incorrect. Which is strange because the rest of the data looks correct to me. 2017 is a big growth year. We have a net gain of 10 planes in '17

 

No, I believe the correct number is over 20 deliveries next year.

 

The true value of the LOA67 pay raise is in reducing the financial pressure on the pilot group to accept a substandard CBA. It's a lot tougher to sell a CBA when the top pay is $200 instead of $166. That pay increase would also make it a lot easier to save a little money for a strike.

 

So, American and Southwest have proactively sent out alerts that their Florida operations will be essentially be closed for Hurricane Matthew. Frontier's response- "We are not anticipating any scheduling impact to MCO operations."

Say again?

Good luck to all of those affected. Work should be the tail-end of your priority list this week.

 

Yet Frontier SOC declared irregular operations starting at 1800 today?