swa was looking to eliminate competition in DEN primarily. They had no intentions of keeping an operation the size of Frontier in tact.

 

Seat protection is not an unreasonable demand and expectation in a merger. There are various forms that have been used. IIRC, SW offered the 2 year protection but FAPA asked for lifetime. Someone correct me if I am wrong.
Just saying a "fence" is not an outrageous idea.

 

As an F9 pilot I am thrilled we took the offer with RAH over SWA. Neither was a good offer but one was clearly better than the other based on the facts at hand. It may turn out to be a total blunder in the end, but at the time it was the best decision.

You call that a gift? lol I get better gifts than that from my in-law's cousins. It would've been crazy to accept a staple, which would've put 50% of our pilots on the streets. Is that what you call equitable integration? We should be thrilled to work at the mighty Southwest right? I admire your company and your culture but most of us love our jobs at Frontier. Btw, all of those applications you have on file from Frontier employees were filled out when we thought we were going out of business. "If you can't beat em', join em" right. Well now we think we can beat you so we don't want to join you. At least not at the bottom. Why do we think we can beat you? Well we are still here right? And there is a reason why you wanted to buy us.

If you bought us:

Our senior captains holding 19-20 days off with day turns to orlando would've been on reserve in BWI.

Junior Captains would be reserve FO's and have to move or commute.

Our FO's would be furloughed and making only 3k per month. That's a huge pay cut. How long would they be on furlough? I am guessing a long time.

Current furloughs looking at a very long time for callbacks as well.

The entire Frontier system including FA's, rampers, gate agents, management, etc would almost all be out of a job

That deal wasn't good for ANYONE here!

As far as the Midwest people, I feel for them I really do. I am hoping they get a good integration towards the top of the new list along with us and they get to benefit from the airbus growth. Also, I am willing to bet SWA is trying to take advantage of MKE and Midwest's demise as well so don't be so quick to throw stones. You certainly took advantage of United's capacity reduction and layoffs in Denver.

 

Because they offered a staple. We countered with a 2 year seat protection. And they countered with a staple.... Negotiation's over. With any negotiation you start out with what you want but know you cant get, then you meet somewhere in the middle. SWAPA wasn't willing to budge. Which I don't blame them. They have to protect their own.

BTW our LOA with Republic includes pay raises through 2015. Not much, but in the right direction.

 

F9 guys keep talking about the LOA. Well, now that we have emerged from BK can someone finally share the details of the thing with us so that we can see what prompted FAPA to go the way they did? Being a part of all this, I would kinda like to know.

 

I am surprised at some of the things posted here because they don't match the facts. SWA made their opening offer. It included seat and pay protection for the FAPA pilots. Seat protection was for 2 years in Denver. There were no plans to furlough FAPA pilots and no pilot at SWA has ever been furloughed. There could have been furloughs but with the yields trending back up now that is not likely as SWA will probably swing back to a expansion mode soon. They are far more likely to expand then any other airline.
I would put the chances of a furlough far more likely with RAH then with SWA. In addition the chance of a complete liquidation is an order of magnitude great at RAH over the next 10 years then SWA.
No negotiations actually happened once the initial positions were put out between SWA and FAPA. Its likely there would have been some movement on the SWA side had negotiations occurred. I am surprised that FAPA did not at least show up with their merger team and try and accomplish something even though the time line was very short. The chances that career earnings and quality of life at RAH would exceed that at SWA is virtually nil.

 

If Midwest was to disappear as you say, why is republic replacing their planes with 190's and the 170 version?

I'm sure you would be just as pis sed off if you were in Midwest's shoes.

 

I disagree. I would be willing to bet that SWA would love nothing more than to make DEN their next, MDW, HOU, PHX, LAS, MDW, BWI, or MCO. Big city, big money, and a domecile.

They were quite candid in their desire to make DEN a "two-airline city."

 

All i know is SWAPA wouldn't budge from a staple and we walked. You may be right when you say SWAPA offered 2 year seat and base protection. I don't recall because it isn't important now. I do know SWAPA offered pay protection however. As far as furloughs well that's debatable. The fact is SWA is already overstaffed. Maybe you have never furloughed but you would've most likely had to in this situation. We ran the numbers and it was around half of our pilot group.

I just think the original post is silly. To say FAPA sold us up the river is completely false. They did the best thing for our pilot group. SWAPA did the best for theirs. It went down the way it had to.

 

You're right. They would've grown denver no doubt. But not enough to recover the size of Frontier's current operation.