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Jetblue and United comparison

Old 01-15-2017, 11:45 AM
  #1  
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Default Jetblue and United comparison

After reading some misinformed comments on how "JetBlue isn't that bad" I just wanted to share a summary of the United contract that I found on another aviation forum. It is staggering how much better they have it there.

Contract hightlights:
-First year pay with snap up: $85.23 (may go up a couple of cents pending arbitration)
-Per Diem: $2.30 domestic $2.75 international
-Profit sharing (have to have worked one full year)
-Crew Meals: Reporting before 8am you get breakfast, flights over 4 hours you get a meal, over 5 hours you get a meal and snack
- Sit time between 2-4 hours requires a Crew lounge or they must provide a hotel room
-Core business district hotel for layover over 14 hours
-New hire uniforms are covered (no allowance after that)
-Dry cleaning of uniforms is covered
-WiFi and DirecTV are reimbursable on deadhead
-Deadheads: must be economy plus window or aisle if you get middle seat it is 50% add pay, first class to recurrent training if available, first class if deadheading to a flight assignment if available and the flight is 3+ hours
-May deviate from Deadheads at the start or end of pairings with a positive space ticket (anywhere in the US or home of record)
-PBS bidding: above the "G Line" you are guaranteed a line, below it you will be reserve but it may award you a line if conditions warrant. Your schedule is as good as your bidding.
- Cross town pay for any trip that starts at a secondary hub airport (ex. LGA)
-Min days off: Lineholder=12 Reserve=12 in 30 day month 13 in 31 day month
-Min day pay 5 hours (averaged over trip)
-1 paid move by company in career after your 1st year, or there are paid moving conditions where they will pay more than once
- Vacation: new hires accrue 1 1/16 day per full bid period, Years 1-4 get 14 days, 5-10 get 21, 11-24 get 35, 25+ get 42
-Sick leave: accrue 5 hours per month (may restore sick leave pay by picking up trip in same bid period)
-Reserve: guarantee is 73 hours, 13 hours to push call out, may assign you short call which is 2:30 call out (essentially get 1 hour of pay for every unused short call or field standby after 2 unused), may get field standby (4 hour length with no pay), may aggressively pick up trips/assignments at 10:55am the morning prior in seniority order
-Lineholder: guarantee is 70 hours, may trade or drop trips in Seniority order in the Seniority Trip Trade window up to 11am the day prior to a trip (senior people will obviously have more luck with this), after 11am the day prior it goes to the real time trip trade where you can only trade day for day (ex. 4 day for a 4 day) (awarded to the fastest clicker, but you may store preferences which will boost you ahead), there is no pool display so every trip drop request is done in the blind
-Retirement: Company direct contribution of 16% (vested immediately), Retirement Health Account: $1 for each hour of service (from your pay) is placed into account held by company to pay for retirement Healthcare
-Insurance: contract defines the minimums and controls costs, LTD: tax free earnings equal to 50% of pilots monthly earnings up to $8000 per month or $96,000 per year (essentially equal to min guarantee minus taxes)"

And here is a another United pilots summary of what is like to work there:

"In between the lines it is really enjoyable flying and the chaos that is regional flying is unheard of. Deadheads, hotels, meals, scheduling, ... it all just works. Flight attendants and gate agents handle their jobs efficiently and professionally. There is very little drama on the line here. I think the longest I waited on hold was 2 min and that was during a major snowstorm in two hubs. Reserve is very civilized. I was doing a trans con commute to the west coast and I was able to fly in the day of and home the last day every time. There are caveats but you can be released at 10 am on your last day on call and I was routinely released at 6-7 am to catch a 7:30am departure home. I didn't like sitting at the crash pad and I aggressively picked up flying one month and credited mid 80's with everything being commutable. I went 30 days without touching an airplane in the fall and I only flew 30-35 hrs per month my whole first year. Most people in the classes around mine were able to get their base of choice within 2-8 months. DEN, CLE, GUA, IAH, ORD, IAD, EWR, LAX, and SFO are most senior to most junior in my opinion. The bottom 4 are realistic right away or within 2 months but if you guess the wrong aircraft boeing/airbus and want DEN after they shuffle the flying out of DEN ... weird stuff does happen. Training pay is 90 hrs at 85.23 plus per diem 24/7. It is almost 10K a month with some of it tax free. Training is training, there won't be any serious headaches if you study a bit and play the game.

You can hold a crappy line within a month or a pretty ok line within 6 months. A crappy line might have 15 days off but you will have waived a lot of protections to get that line and you might have 11 days of flying in a row with 30+ hr overnights mixed in to make it legal. You will most likely try to trade or drop those trips but it is rare for good trips to pop up in open time. Our pbs system is a turd and you will spend hours each month trying to figure it out but in many ways everything else is run similar to the way xjt used to be run. I miss the "Max days off" button on smartpref because to bid that here you have about 10 lines of text and you still probably dorked it up. I haven't had to pay claim anything, every reimbursement is in my bank account within a few days, and they treat you like a professional. Best of luck to you!"
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Old 01-15-2017, 11:48 AM
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We know they have a better contract. What do you think we are working on?!
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Old 01-15-2017, 11:59 AM
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Originally Posted by dontcare4U View Post
We know they have a better contract. What do you think we are working on?!
Our contracts are so far apart that I just can see it getting even close to what they have. I guess that what I am just trying say that if you are a junior FO you are probably best off by trying to leave JetBlue.
I keep flying with guys that still go above and beyond the scope of their job and with that being said what's the company's motivation to pay us more?
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Old 01-15-2017, 12:43 PM
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Originally Posted by dontcare4U View Post
We know they have a better contract. What do you think we are working on?!
I don't think 40% do know. I still see blue gloves, stand ups, VDAs, RSAs, waiting till in base to write stuff up, being accessible to the company with our unpaid mobile phones, early brake releases, not calling scheduling to extend duty as we wait for a hotel, extending FDPs, arriving before showtimes, properly refuting false delay codes, arriving at work sick, not fatiguing out just to get home. I'd say 1 out 3 guys a fly with are guilty. I'm actually disgusted our unity.

I always like my favorite Rounders quote "if you can't spot the sucker at the table, we'll you are the sucker".
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Old 01-15-2017, 12:54 PM
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Originally Posted by Rascal View Post
Our contracts are so far apart that I just can see it getting even close to what they have. I guess that what I am just trying say that if you are a junior FO you are probably best off by trying to leave JetBlue.
I keep flying with guys that still go above and beyond the scope of their job and with that being said what's the company's motivation to pay us more?
I understand what you're saying and certainly can't argue that. Personally, over the past year I've seen much less going above and beyond. I've only seen 1 CA don the blue gloves and 2 stand-ups, which is still 3 more than I'd like to see. It seems some see it all the time while others rarely see it.
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Old 01-15-2017, 01:04 PM
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I will never forget flying with a guy at the United regionals who told me a story how he used to be a Southwest Pilot !!!? He was on the line for 6 or 7 months when United got that big ass contract in 99' )I think). All his buddies at United told him he was an idiot for staying at Southwest because they were all going to be 73 captains in two years. So he leaves, furloughed twice ( 9/11, Age 65, financial meltdown 08') and now he's flying an RJ for 60 grand while his buddies all at SW are captains. I remember this story whenever my buddies at legacys tell me about how much money they will be making.
Nobody knows for sure what the future is going to bring us. What keeps me from applying is that H.O.P.E.fully we will get a good contract and I will be sitting at 50% seniority at a profitable healthy airline that has huge potential for growth. B6 has its problems just like all airlines do. Hopefully our union will be strong in the future and we get what we deserve.

Oh and BTW do you know what the strongest human emotion is before fear?
H.O.P.E.
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Old 01-15-2017, 01:08 PM
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Originally Posted by dontcare4U View Post
We know they have a better contract. What do you think we are working on?!
It blows my mind how many Captains I fly with that have no idea what other airlines pay their pilots or how far behind we are in every area of our current contract.

I wish our union would put out a blast each week with a specific section of our contract and compare that section to 3-4 other airlines rate, language, etc. Literally spelling out how far behind we are, so maybe some of these guys/girls will get on board. I don't think many people really look at the contract comparison guide.
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Old 01-15-2017, 01:13 PM
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Originally Posted by Papa Bear View Post
I will never forget flying with a guy at the United regionals who told me a story how he used to be a Southwest Pilot !!!? He was on the line for 6 or 7 months when United got that big ass contract in 99' )I think). All his buddies at United told him he was an idiot for staying at Southwest because they were all going to be 73 captains in two years. So he leaves, furloughed twice ( 9/11, Age 65, financial meltdown 08') and now he's flying an RJ for 60 grand while his buddies all at SW are captains. I remember this story whenever my buddies at legacys tell me about how much money they will be making.
Nobody knows for sure what the future is going to bring us. What keeps me from applying is that H.O.P.E.fully we will get a good contract and I will be sitting at 50% seniority at a profitable healthy airline that has huge potential for growth. B6 has its problems just like all airlines do. Hopefully our union will be strong in the future and we get what we deserve.

Oh and BTW do you know what the strongest human emotion is before fear?
H.O.P.E.


We all know pilots with stories like that especially stemming from the days just prior to 9/11. My advice to the youngin's is to not job hop too much and do not chase the money. Something else is going to happen soon to quell this uptick in hiring someday. Maybe sooner. Probably later. Just be careful.
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Old 01-15-2017, 01:29 PM
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Originally Posted by Learflyer View Post
We all know pilots with stories like that especially stemming from the days just prior to 9/11. My advice to the youngin's is to not job hop too much and do not chase the money. Something else is going to happen soon to quell this uptick in hiring someday. Maybe sooner. Probably later. Just be careful.
It is not just about the the contract. The culture of JetBlue is a problem. Remember we don't have pilots and flight attendants at JetBlue, we have CREWMEMBERS. Pilots at JetBlue are treated on par with flight attendants and this is not going to change anytime soon. The way this company handles IROP's is on par with the worst of the regionals. Last week, after a few inches of snow I waited well over an hour on hold with crew services to get a hotel. I was promised a hotel room ASAP and in the end I did not get one till 8 hours later. Because I did not get the room till 5AM, now I was illegal fly my scheduled flight that day. This type of stuff just doesn't happen at the other Majors.
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Old 01-15-2017, 02:33 PM
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Originally Posted by Rascal View Post
It is not just about the the contract. The culture of JetBlue is a problem. Remember we don't have pilots and flight attendants at JetBlue, we have CREWMEMBERS. Pilots at JetBlue are treated on par with flight attendants and this is not going to change anytime soon. The way this company handles IROP's is on par with the worst of the regionals. Last week, after a few inches of snow I waited well over an hour on hold with crew services to get a hotel. I was promised a hotel room ASAP and in the end I did not get one till 8 hours later. Because I did not get the room till 5AM, now I was illegal fly my scheduled flight that day. This type of stuff just doesn't happen at the other Majors.
Maybe you should revisit the badging office.... mine says Pilot right on it.
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