important emphasis on MAY

 

Question about downgrading.

lets say the company decides to downgrade 800 pilots starting October 1st. You can’t possibly put 800 pilots in the sim in one months time for a FO PC check because of limited sim capacity (don’t forget all the recurrent training for other pilots as well.)

So my question is, if you are a captain and you are downgrading when does your new FO payrate start? When you finish your PC? So it could possibly take many months past October 1st to wait your turn for your “downgrade PC” and your new FO payrate?

and they can’t force you to keep flying as a captain but pay you FO rate, or maybe they can just tell you are automatically dq’ed from being a captain and you have a couple of months off untill your PC is available? Asking for a friend.

 

with no more newhires or upg in sim there is likely tons of sim time open

 

Just a line guy, so not even worth $0.02...
The number is less than 800 furloughed, so probably not more than 400 downgrades.
Downgrading will be done in reverse seniority. You will fly/sit reserve and get paid as a Captain until start/end of GS/OE (don’t know, and contract doesn’t have much to say about downgrade). You will not fly as a captain at FO rates. There will (should?) be displacement/downgrade bids with training dates, and it will/should be awarded in seniority order. If no one bids it, it will be assigned in reverse seniority. It will take a few days of training and OE to downgrade, but I think with SIM capacity and check airmen availability based on hiring 60/month, they can probably downgrade 3 times that. Discuss........

 

Let’s all let this play out a little bit. It’s nice to be prepared but just don’t get ahead of ourselves. This is a long road and so many scenarios can play out. My guess is August September is our new bottom in travel and it’s no where near April so it’s only up from there. You can see it where you live. Life is lumbering along. Now one is going to go back into lockdown and spirit has the liquidity to push through all this for a while and the longer this goes the more people are just going to say F it and fly.

We will lose some passengers for economic reasons and gain passengers moving down in product seeking savings so that’s a good thing for us. How much smaller do we need to be and for how long is what remains to be seen and spirit doesn’t even know. They have to send the letters just in case but no amount of money will change that number up or down. They will build a schedule and it will require a certain amount of pilots whether they make $500 or $0. Same required pilots. Just a matter of where on the seniority list they come from.

Be prepared but don’t react to something that hasn’t happened is all I’m saying. We have some time here.

 

806 notices sent out

 

We are losing 100 million a month, there will be furloughs.

 

Read it again. He didn’t say there will not be furlough. He said 20%-30% “may” be furlough. As in, may be 20%-30% or less.

 

The town hall wasn’t very positive. I’d say chance of furloughs and downgrades, 100%

 

could you please go over the highlights? I was flying and couldn’t listen in.