Brown Dog

From another forum:

I just talked to several friends at Republic that said the CEO of Republic is going to try to run F9 separately from the rest of the company. He also said that if the pilots fight this violation of their scope language that he will sell 51% of F9 and own 49% to get around scope.

There has also been mention of Republic using 190's under the Frontier Brand but flown under the Republic Certificate, and not flown by F9 pilots to get around their wages. They have already mentioned using Airbus 318's in MKE under the Midwest brand. Who will fly those airplanes?

And....

In the Denver paper today the RAH ceo said that "in six months we'll have the right airplanes on the right routes" Whatever that means.


Any truth to any of this? If so can you say "F9'd at the drive thru?"

B.D.

xtreme

The incurable cancer.

acl65pilot

I think that he is just telling you that he will sell F9. I am sure the For Sale sign is still in the window.

FAULTPUSH

Then why did he buy F9 in the first place? It's not like there are buyers who will pay more for F9, or they would have been at the auction.

av8tordude

I don't believe for one second that BB will sell a majority stake in Frontier a few reasons...

1. A company will NOT spends millions a dollars to aquire another company just to sell majority control to another party. BB does NOT want to operate a regional airline! His vision has been and will ALWAYS be a major player in the airline industry. Example: Our aircraft seat capacity has grown in size since he's been CEO.

2. BB can't operate it as a seperate entity as our contract forbids it. BB knows this and he knows he will lose monetarily and negotition advantage if/when we go to court to fight it. It would be challenging (but possible) to run a cohesive airline without complete control.

3. Investors will question his leadership if he loses control of Frontier. Frontier plays a major role into putting together an airline that can compete head to head with our competition (WN, Airtran, Jetblue).

FlyinPiker

He can still have controlling interest. Keep 49% for himself and make sure the 51% is split amongst two or more players.

Why buy it in the first place?

Like someone else said, he wants to run with the big dogs.

Also, he now has a home for his 170's (or even 50 seaters like with Midwest) if people start kicking him to the curb when contracts come time for renewal.

Having to start everything from scratch was a huge disadvantage for FlyI and Expressjet.

TBucket

I'd be careful thinking he "can't" run it as a separate airline due to the contract... Ours said the same thing when Gojets was started... There are a multitude of legal loopholes one can jump through to prove that the company is "separate"... One more layer of holding companies and subsidiaries, and they'll be all set...

ScaryKite

He already tried it when they started republic. There was a 97 percent strike authorization vote, and if he tries it again. I bet we get somewhere in the neighborhood of 97 percent again. And the gojet deal was a three way CF between DM, RL and ALPA. It could have been handled better on all ends. And our scope clause in our contract is pretty solid, they can find all loopholes and prove its a seperate company but our contract will hold against all of his trickery........... except if he sells 51% ( not gonna happen)

If there is one thing you can learn from BB and WHs good cop/bad cop routine, they always throw out the scare tactics, especially during growth/negotiations. He says hes going to sell 51 percent of F9. But he would be a fool to do so, many reasons already on this thread. If he wants to sell the majority stake by all means go ahead. We as the pilots of RAH would be right where we were before all this fiasco started. Hes just bluffing. He wouldnt throw away 150 million and buy an airline just to sell it off to get around some training costs.


ONE COMPANY, ONE LIST, ONE CONTRACT! If you think our current contractual rates are low now, wait until he offers all the 170 and 190 flying to Lynx at 50 percent RAH rates. Then the bar is set even lower. If there is one thing any airline pilot has learned in the past 25 years. SCOPE is gold, and never give it up for anything.

av8tordude

I SECOND THAT....PERIOD!!!!!

SaltyDog

Southwest was at the auction, my recollection was that Southwest offered more but got turned down. I think alot of pilots in several groups just got taken for a management ride, now the real pain begins. RLA favors the owners, not the employees. Good luck.