Amazing! With all that free time maybe they should educate themselves on OAL contracts to see how far behind they are.

 

Not much to explain for dropping. Our red/green reserve system has been explained before but depending on staffing you can drop all your awarded trips and down to “0” credit. From there you can pick up open time trips for straight pay on the days you prefer to work, list yourself for premium flying on our X/Y lists for 200% or just not work at all. The flexibility it allows for is unmatched. I am under a year at Spirit and have had three months where I have dropped all my awarded trips and picked up only premium flying.

 

NK is only behind in pay. Work rules are industry standard or better.

 

So drop all the trips I used my seniority to hold during the bid, and then drop them to pick up straight time from the CRAP trips sitting in open time?

At Blue, there is very little premium trips, and the ones that drop are only realistically going to be picked up by someone who lives within an hour of the airport, same goes for premium VDA (a call list you can put yourself on).

As for dropping, the grid would need to be green, and even if the grid starts out green at the bid open, after the first few guys (at the top) exercise their drops, the list is no longer green. For scheduling flexibility, id definitely like to see drop to xx, maybe 50 hours (without using PTO), but I don't see the widely available utility of drop to zero, especially if we need to give up something or give up a gain in something that could benefit a larger proportion of the group to get it.

I'm sure the guys who live within an hour of base would love drop to zero...

 

no southwest has that over christmas

 

Industry Standard? Spirit doesn't even have Block or Better pay/per leg. It is in the current TA, and if it passes, not even implemented until 2024.

 

You’re listening to a person that’s been at Spirit under a year. Fairly certain he/she/they do not understand what industry standard means.

Yes, the ability to drop trips is very nice when the grid is green. I prefer to drop down to 40-50 hours a month. It’s very nice to have that option. I understand y’all have ways to drop pairings at JBLU as well- using PTO and other options. Hopefully we can come to some agreement on being able to drop down to a certain amount of hours and not be forced to fly 60-70 hours like some other airlines out there.

 

The grid goes green all the time if you watch it enough. I know brand new relief line pilots who have dropped to zero.

The fact that we can do premium pay without making up the credit we dropped is unmatched. It’s definitely needed in the JCBA.

The way our contract handles premium pay also forces the company to give out probably more premium than they would like.

Why are we talking about giving up anything? We can sit here and operate as separate pilot groups as long as JetBlue would like. Just costs them more and more money the longer they hold out.

 

This right here!!!

Y’all need to get your head out of your ass if you think we need to give anything up in this negotiating environment, especially since the merger can’t happen until the JCBA is in place. We’re in the driver’s seat here….

 

Hey now, AA had it over Xmas not too long also IIRC