AAflyer

Hey Spirit Guys, what up?

May 31, 2008

Greetings fellow pilots,

At 1744 EDT Friday evening our Vice President of Operations, Jeff Carlson, sent facsimile copies of three certified letters to ALPA President Capt. John Prater. These letters were notices pursuant to the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN). Spirit Airlines gave the minimum required legal notice of potential base closings in LGA and SJU, and of a potential reduction in base size in FLL. Capt. Creed, upon hearing of the notices, spoke directly with Ben Baldanza. Ben indicated Spirit would be finalizing decisions concerning these bases in the next week, and merely wanted to have the legal notification in play for that eventuality.

Under the WARN Act the Company is required to provide an accurate number of those employees who could be affected by these types of decisions. Spirit has indicated 242 pilots are exposed to displacement or furlough. We hope their plan includes the growth of other bases but it’s hard to imagine the economic benefit of such realignment in these times of cost control.

cruiseclimb

That's a shame. Spirit was getting ready for some serious growth before all of this.

shiftwork

Sounds like something that JC would do; from what guys that fly "Red Tails" have said.

Who knows.... we are to start mediated talks with the company next week,
coincidence?????

AAflyer

Good Luck!! We are ALL in for the flight of our lives.

AAflyer

Kingjay

I think they are just putting the bases back they way they were before last year. you know the DTW base closing BS that was you know BS well because it was BS they are now having to undo what they did, but do it in such a way as to get all the pilots spinning like tops!

Molon Labe

JC when he was at Red-Tail oversaw the closing of the Seattle base which closed down the ALPA council there. Which I might add was a council that at that time a more pro-pilot anti management council than where the pilots wound up displacing to. The net effect was their votes went to a milk-sop council which translated into a weaker MEC position than would otherwise happen. Concessionary negotiations went through more smoothly. Two years later Seattle was reopened to save the company money............Hummmmm. But base closings and furloughs will also be used to disrupt and disorient pilots in order to create an atmosphere of crisis and possibly preventable doom.......and he will say that you CAN help if you take a BIG cut now!...........Then he will give himself a bonus.

newarkblows

sad to hear. on a side note i wonder if those kids that were hired from the Riddle 172 straight to the airbus are in that bunch?

NJGov

The displacement / furlough notice will affect 242 pilots. That is about 45% of the pilot group. I don't think the riddle juniors rose in seniority all that quickly. Last I heard they are still in the bottom 10% of the list.

RVCguy44

"Last you heard", NJGOV?

YOU are one of them! you of all people should know your own seniority number!..... riddler

shiftwork

Why did he leave NWA?