At some point we have to acknowledge we are negotiating with JB management too.

what will they be willing to negotiate off of. A contract they are familiar with or a completely new system.

how much leverage do we have to make major changes? I contended we do have a good bit of leverage, but where will it be spent?

 

Sure but it's going to be a "new" company at the merger. The "old" Jet Blue wasn't able to cut it and grow as management wanted. The JCBA will be the start of something brand new and it's best to treat it that way and not tie any of our work rules to what wasn't working for the pilot group. You're bringing together two pilot groups with two very different CBAs. You take take the best of each and go from there.

 

To answer a later post of yours, DTZ and the GREEN GRID rules are TWO SEPARATE THINGS.

The big cost is in fact the Green Grid rules, as you say. The cost of that is born by the company and the pilots (used up negotiating capital). But the cost is WORTH the investment. But, why let the bulk of the benefit of the Green Grid rules go potentially to the top 5-10-15 guys in each seat that get first crack at the reserve grid via the seniority based windows that open up first? As you say, it's "only a few pilots" who chose to actually drop to ZERO. So why is the Drop to ZERO needed? If we are gonna invest a large part of our negotiating capital, as we SHOULD, into the Green Grid rules, let's also make sure most of the group can benefit that great grid by having a limit on how much any one pilot can drop, just like EVERY OTHER AIRLINE IN THE COUNTRY. DT40-50 is still industry leading, and allows a much larger proportion of the pilot group to utilize that nice new expensive Green Grid...

It's crazy how some of you don't see this, or have any balanced view of this provision.

Why spend all that negotiating capital on a Green Grid and allow the top 5-10-15 to potentially take the grid back to Red before the rest of the group gets a chance? Stupid.

 

JB pilots have an unfavorable opinion of the RESERVE GRID. That is separate entirely from DTZ. The Green Grid rules would save 95% of the "denied" drops/swaps JB pilots experience. DTZ would ultimately harm the utility of an improved Green Grid by allowing the top 5-10-15 guys in each seat to take the grid back to Red via the seniority windows before the rest of the group even gets a chance to drop anything.

 

Correction: JetBlue wasn’t able to grow as FAST as management wanted. It has always been stated the acquisition just accelerates B6s growth plans by 5-7 years, but the overall plan remains little changed. Let’s be clear, B6 is consuming NK, spitting out what it doesn’t like. We should aim to do the same with the JCBA and build off what we have, it will not be a blank slate, something brand new. it better not be! And no it will not be a “new” airline…. It will be JetBlue for better or for worse with the best parts Spirit brings to the table. Like the Borg or the Jeepers Creepers monster that is B6s plan.

Quick question-

Would you like to build off the TA’d B6 payrates, NKs TAd payrates? Or start from scratch as a “new” airline?

We BUILD off the best of what we have!

 

You’re correct. This isn’t the spirit frontier deal. It’s not a merger. It’s an acquisition. It won’t be a new airline. It’ll be a bigger more capable JetBlue.

 

Obviously it’ll be Jet Blue going forward but hopefully be operating different than it was before. Unless you’d like to remain a niche NE airline with ****ty work rules..

The JCBA should bring the best of both CBAs. I keep reading JB pilots opinions on DTZ and reserve grids and they are all negative because y’all have **** rules. Hence why Spirits grid and DTZ should be where we start with those. And obviously JB pay rates…

 

Then we are in more agreement then. But just saying B6 has some ****ty work rules as a blanket statement is again incorrect and uneducated. It would be just as incorrect and uneducated if I called NK an unsustainable LCC with ****ty pay. We at B6 have our bad (rsv grid/ drop/swap) and some very good work rules (reassignments/ EPS/Emergency Assignment/Hours of Svc) that the legacies are still currently trying to match. You really need to be more nuanced in your sweeping statements. You no doubt are very educated on your contract, you should try to educate yourself on the finer points of ours before advocating tossing everything out but our payrates!

 

A lot of ignorance here masquerading as wisdom.
I have actually only dropped completely to zero one (1) time and it wasn’t as a “top 5-10-15” guy

I was in one of the last few classes to go through training prior to hiring stopping for COVID. There was little flying going on and my class and several others waited months for IOE. After that, we were given a line for one month to try to get as much flying in as possible towards consolidation. It wouldn’t have been enough, so I dropped the entire schedule to rebuild a new one from leftover scraps and other peoples dropped trips to get me consolidated because as one of the junior guys not just at NK but in the majors, I sat a lot of reserve and sure didn’t fly many hours for the next 6 months. I did get consolidated in that one month though. Picking up trips at three different bases to do it.

So no, it ain’t just for the top “5-10-15” most senior pilots. You shouldn’t try to talk authoritatively about something you clearly don’t understand.

 

Got it. You did something, once, at a strange time in the business (COVID) and some outside of the top 15 got drops. And the reserve grid at Spirit is somehow always green, junior pilots drop all their weekend and holiday trips, and the planes just get parked on weekends and holidays unless management wants to pay premium. Incredible! Must be why pilots leave Delta, UAL and FedEx to come to Spirit, it really does sound too good to be true!

It's odd that you had to drop EVERYTHING to zero before rebuilding. Does you FLICA not have a "swap" function?

It's also odd how in most posts you say almost no one uses the FULL ZERO part of DTZ, yet somehow ZERO is critical, can't even be DT10, or DT15, must be ZERO, even though almost no one does that, according to you. And you can't acknowledge that having some kind of limit on the DTZ would push the green grid further down the seniority list for people in the middle or bottom to use before the grids finally go red during the seniority windows? Even other Spirit pilots acknowledge that the more junior guys have "to watch the grid" for when someone else picks up a trip, so they can drop something. That's an acknowledgement that the grids do go red. So instead of allowing the top guys to drop EVERYTHING, without limits, during the opening of the seniority windows, which turns that expensive new Green Grid to Red before it gets further down the list, why not have some limits, at least during the seniority windows, so that more of the group can benefit from that new Green Grid that WE ALL WILL PAY FOR with negotiating capital???