I am waiting to see Pref Bid, effectively negating our training/vacation pay as well as the other QOL life issues. They have asked for Pref Bid during every concessionary negotiation (LOA 39, LOA 67) and it was monetized to be an enormous "give back".

Anything with Pref Bid should be a no vote.

Agreed except for one thing and we no the answer already. If we control the keys to Pref. Bid I would possibly entertain it. Otherwise no!

According to the guys at the union meeting I attended last month, the company has never asked for Pref Bid. It's never even been brought up during negotiations. Apparently it takes 2-3 years for a company to get their money back when implementing pref bid. Would lead me to believe these guys don't plan on being around much longer.

I've heard the same thing from NC members regarding prefbid.

Now, I understand that everyone believes that Indigo Partners is in the business of flipping little airlines into ULCC cash machines, and that racing to IPO is part of their strategy; I have no argument against that. I think that after an IPO that Indigo's involvement in management of the airline will back off. But do they have any reason to exit entirely as majority stockholders? Besides Spirit do we have any example of them quickly exiting an airline investment? They are still invested in Whizz Air and Volaris. I think we may be attached to them for some time to come.

Interesting. I was pretty surprised that they didn't have pref bid in that first "proposal" they gave us a while back. I suppose if there is a hefty cost to implement pbs, they probably figure they can get rid of vacation drop or slide with contract language instead of going pbs.

Any proposal that includes Pref Bid will be an automatic 'NO' vote from me. I don't care who controls the 'keys' or what the pay rate is (unless it happens to exceed $300/hr which will never happen).

That seems to be a common threat, but honestly man I hope you're smart enough to objectively evaluate the entire proposal and then decide if it's a yes or no.

OK. I'll admit that was a quick and not well thought out response. I should not have used the words 'automatic NO vote'.

I am smart enough to thoroughly evaluate any proposal we are presented with.

I hope that we are not presented with a proposal that includes Pref Bid, because it is such a concession to what we have now, that the rest of the proposal would have to be laden with huge advances in almost every other area of the contract (pay in excess of $300/hr for example) for me to support it.

I find it hard to imagine a proposal including Pref Bid that I could support.

I agree.

I'm not even sure how the "keys" to Prefbid can be given to us. It's still a system where the top 10-15% senior peeps are the only ones who are happy...

This negotiation isn't rocket science and we're not the first airline to go through it. I full expect us to get a lot of what we want and a few of what we don't but just have to tolerate. I've concluded that this company is not going to offer anything NEAR what we want until self-help. At this point, that has to be our goal. Self-help. Then, when the company can't take anymore, we up the ante to what we want.

So is the thinking around campus that once the IPO is done the merger with Spirit is imminent?