You guys are horrible at this lol.

Radar and First,

What exactly are your MO's on this thread?

What he said!!! Children of the "Magenta" in living color!! McDonald's workers in a "Yellow" school bus!! F&H laughing all the way to the bank...LMFAO!!

You didn't answer the question.

Clarify please. My hearing aids were not installed!

Guys, stop feeding the trolls. You're only giving them what they crave...attention. Let those pathetic losers wither on the vine.

What is your objective by participating in this thread?

Well the thread is pure satire isn't it? It starts out with an invitation to low self esteem and low tier pilots. If it bothers you that much to figure out my MO regarding this thread because it was a calling to you personally, then by all means carry on and I'll just observe.

Four Short of a High Five!

The attached PDF is sized for a Vistaprint bumper sticker. They're pretty cheap. Have fun with it.

www.vistaprint.com

Lol, these are getting better and better!!

Great plan. Walk around our passengers with low tier stickers all over your bags, like they need another reason to think that already. What's next, hold a sign during boarding that says " I am a dumb ***"? Not sending the right message, nobody will know what the heck your talking about and wont care enough to ask. All they will know is you are low tier. Have fun with it - making yourself look like an idiot

Your CEO said it to your INVESTORS, it's not a big secret. If he wants to brand NK as LOWER TIER, should your customers be the only ones to not be in on the public secret?

Maybe your CEO will say that you also carry lower tier passengers so many of them will not know what "TIER" means without a careful explanation.

Thats the point....if a passenger asks why you have a "low tier" sticker on your bag, you say "My CEO thinks the pilots here at Spirit are 'low tier"

Having passengers see this is the only way Bob will be held accountable for what he said. I would love for a newsfeed to pick up the fact that Spirit pilots have stickers noting they are low tier pilots. They sure as heck wont pick up a small memo ALPA sent out to its members.

Does walking around in circles, holding little signs, in the hot heat, make pilots looks like "idiots" as well? Because that day is coming as well.

If they dont ask about the stickers, who cares. They saw it. Its war, sometimes many small paper cuts make the most damage. Swallow your pride, we fly a big yellow airplane.

Been watching this thread. May have missed it... The CEO stated the pilots are "low tier?!?!?"

He most certainly did. During the last weeks earnings call.

Said we don't rate industry standard wages because we're low tier. Also, because our upgrade times are now longer than both Delta and FedEX, but I'm guessing he didn't get that message.

What really should count is what passengers are actually paying. I pulled up some numbers from the BTS DB1BMarket data table comparing NK and WN. Here you go:

LAS - FLL, Q1/2015, 10% sample of all purchased tickets (approx. 200-300 tickets per carrier).
Mean fare on NK: $153.89, mean fare on WN: $234.50
Max fare on NK: $583, max fare on WN: $712.15
Distribution of fares is normal and almost identical between both carriers.

These are "itinerary fares" which account for base fares + baggage, big front seat upgrade, etc. Not 100% certain if it includes buy-on-board food and drinks, but even if doesn't it looks like if you pay an average of less than $80 per fight for soda and snacks on NK that you'll come out ahead.

Also figured since this is a longer flight, it would probably show NK closer to WN than typical (i.e. more likely for checked bags and BOB purchases). Comparing LAS - LAX the difference in average fares is much larger.

Gotta say I'm not sporting a low tier sticker and I don't even have a place to put it without a flight kit anyway. Kind of like the FA bag tags that said barely fair. No one made the correlation to the FA contract. It just made the pax think about their ticket. This slogan is even worse. I think it is akin to a sticker that says "I'm a dip****". It's too vague to understand.

Maybe a lanyard that says "our CEO thinks we are low tier pilots" or a sticker if you have a place for it.

Or
"Professional pilots
Low tier compensation"

"CEO says we are low tier pilots
We are professionals
Contract now!"

"Low tier fares does not mean low tier pilots
CEO says yes it does"

In fairness for accuracy...here is the exact quote. Clearly stepped on his junk. I dont think he believes the pilots are of a lower quality than other airlines, just that we should be paid lower because our pricing is in a lower tier than legacy carriers. Pure crackhead logic, and im loving the fallout over this.

Analyst asks-"Okay. And as a followup to that, Bob, I know you want to avoid negotiating in public, but the industry wage bar is rising at a pretty rapid clip for aviators and your cost structure obviously is already quite lean. Is it inevitable that the next pilot contract reduces margins? I mean, when I think about the flexibility that some of your competitors have, they can densify, they can make offsetting revisions to profit sharing, they can add back seats, that kind of stuff. I mean you're already doing all of that stuff. So am I missing something?"


And Fornaro says
"No, I think, there are again a couple of differences and like I said, in terms of pricing, there are tiers. You have, again, Frontier and Allegiant well below us and that's our peer group, and you move into another bracket, you have JetBlue slightly above us and then you actually have the legacies, and I think there is a context for all this stuff. And in terms of what we offer, we offer fast growth, our pilots become captains much earlier than their peers."

Maybe since management believes we should be compensated less because our upgrade times are so low, we should be trumpeting to the public the fact that our Captains will be the least experienced in the industry?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

But that isnt accurate. Shorter upgrade times doesnt mean "less experienced," just less time at this airline.

It is like saying "Military pilots are less safe because on average they have a fraction of the hours of a career 121 pilot."

You have to look at our new hires and where they have come from. We have hired lots from Airlines that went out of business such as ASTAR or DHL if you will, Evergreen, World, North American, Comair and so on. Then we get the heavy drivers that come here from Omni, Skylease Cargo and so on. Then we get the pilots that have spent a few years as a Captain for the regional airlines.

I would say that even though our upgrade times are low, our new Captains are some of the most experienced and capable pilots in the industry.

The pilots flying for Spirit are a very talented group of aviators and our compensation should reflect that fact.

That's right, I am dangerous, Ice...Man. :D

Great post! I agree.

I've met a few guys from the Middle East that had Airbus time, as well.

Too bad we got rid of our flight kits. Have to be creative now with sticker placement.

Tell us more Mr. Wizard.

"A low-cost, low-fare carrier such as Spirit Airlines Inc. makes its living on passenger fees. That those fees, known as non-ticket revenue, dropped by more than $2 per passenger in the first quarter, compared to a year ago, might suggest a shift in travelers' tolerance for additional charges.

Spirit blames its sagging fee tally on low fares: Travelers seeking out the lowest fares have had plenty of choices, with a raft of bargain flights, some below $50, departing from cities nationwide. Those price-sensitive travelers enticed by the lowest of low prices tend to avoid racking up additional fees"

Not sure the finger is actually necessary, but the slogan itself is genius and I'd gladly rock one of those on my gear.

Did you read the Bloomberg article you are quoting or just copy and paste the first paragraph? Price compression is a problem for low-cost airlines because CASM gaps between low-cost and legacy operators narrow when oil is cheap. Price is clearly the main product at ULCC's, and downward pressure on fares makes the product look less appealing when bundled-product airlines are offering tickets much closer in price.

None of this is necessarily a big surprise, the low-cost business model tends to not see quite the same high-highs and low-lows as the legacy product for various reasons. This is not a sign that passengers are waging war on airline fees, they are just choosing other options because they can afford to. That will change in the next economic cycle, and that is the good thing about the low-cost model - it is rather resilient to changing economic conditions.

Love love love the Low Tier Newsletter that was sent company wide, to everyone's email...haha...Fantastic

I'm not a computer guy, so forgive me if this obvious.... How in the hell did someone anonymously email the entire company at once? Unless they individually entered everyone's address.... I dunno... sounds like a security issue to me.

Sounds pretty awesome is what it sounds like. **** this place

You obviously are not Nick Burns; your company IT guy. IT's not a security risk, it was sent the same way any email is sent.

Hmmm... I guess I don't know how to email.

* sent from my jitterbug

I was making a SNL reference, :D

Ugh, moooove!

It's done the same simple way that we receive emails from a random FLL ramper who is looking to drop a shift.

To: pilots

That's it, that easy

But anonymously? That's what I don't get. Eh, whatever. I'll go back to day drinking.

Pretty easy. Sigaint is a secure darknet email service, nearly impossible to trace. Much, much, much harder to track than just a standard virtual server or simple email service, the sender is completely anonymous.

For the record, it wasn't me.

One thing is for sure, the dynamics of things have just changed.

I wouldn't be surprised if we receive an email next week about illegal job actions either from the company or union.

The email is funny, but it will only allow the company to NOI more and more,
based on suspicion of a job action.