Voski

When do the NK and F9 contracts become amendable? It’ll be interesting to see what happens in the “post-COVID” era.

CincoDeMayo

Spirit is March 2023, openers 6 months prior.

Xdashdriver

F9 is January 2024

Voski

If someone found themselves in a similar situation today -- lives in ORD, 20ish years younger with wife+kids, and has the option of Frontier or Spirit -- how would any of these recommendations/considerations change? Also, with the shakeup of the industry due to COVID, is there one company that has a better outlook in the recovery?

Meep

Id go to whichever calls first. With that said, think NK has a bigger ORD base.

Excargodog

whichever calls first. If you are lucky enough to get a CJO from both simultaneously, NK in a very close call, which actually might be mooted altogether if they wind up merging. No, no insider info, but basically the same equipment, the same business model, contracts very similar (small nod to NK for work rules, and very small nod to F9 for a buck or two more an hour) and both ALPA. It would probably be the easiest merger on record.

Qotsaautopilot

You don’t go to southwest if you want to be senior before you die. You don’t go to breeze if you want to make any money or get senior without assuming massive risk.

Now, can you get senior relatively quickly and make a comfortable living at frontier or spirit? That depends on the future of ORD if that’s the domicile where you live and want to stay. If a company wants to have many small bases the company grows but your monthly bidding seniority really doesn’t because they just keep opening more and more bases. That seems to be what frontier is doing.

That being said, I think the company wide seniority potential for a new hire favors frontier. Unlike the legacies where seniority is driven by retirements, at the LCCs it’s driven by growth both company wide and in domicile. To upgrade or be a very senior FO either company has to double in size and so does ORD.

This is why it takes so long to gain seniority at southwest these days. To double that massive company would take decades if ever and retirements aren’t near the pace as the legacies. Still a great place to work with a great contract.

My point being that with the contracts being close at spirit and frontier the tipping point should be seniority growth which favors frontier with the wild card being how they plan to move forward with domicile structure. I do think you can make more money at spirit without having to work 82+ all the time.

TurboFanMan

F9 has no plans of expanding ORD operations, straight from BL. ORD has actually shrunk from 5 years ago.

turbojet28

I’m sure that as far as he knows, that is true. And maybe that is true, long-term. But it’s also true that the long-term vision for ORD (or anywhere else for that matter) is stuff above that office.

Cyio

I mean this cant all be looked at in pure domicile growth though can it? Spirit has something like 100 more planes on order with 50 more options (dont hold me to that, just going off memory), which is a lot of new hiring to happen over the next 5-7 years. That in of itself is natural seniority growth irrespective of domicile. Now I think you were answering the question about just growth in ORD, which is fair, just thought I would throw this into the mix as well.