DTW Trips at Spirit
 

Would anybody be willing to share what a standard line looks like in DTW? Curious as to what cities you get out to, overnights, legs per day, etc. Would also be curious about the other bases in comparison if you might know them better.

TYIA

sheesh.

filler

Lol, right? OP this should about cover the magnitude of your question:

https://www.spirit.com/en/route-map

Ill apologize for some of the Delta Bravos you may encounter here. There seem to be 5-6 miserable pricks here, which is ironic considering every single airline in the United States is hiring.

I was DTW based for a couple months 2 years ago. I was primarily reserve, but I can say is you’ll do a lot of FL and LAX/SAN.

Once I got a line (and was ORD based) I swapped into a number of trips with long SJO, Costs Rica. I’ve done some SDQ, Santo Domingo as well. SDQ was back in October. Since Covid some of the Intl overnights we used to do haven’t come back just yet.

It seems DTW has a number of Intl overnights, especially compared to ORD. This can change, but that’s what I have noticed.

Generally speaking a vast vast majority of your trips will be 2 legs a day. In a 3/4 day trip you may see a 3 leg day, but it’s incredible rare to see more than that. About the only time you’ll see 4 or 5 is a trip that has short west coast hops between BUR-LAS-SNA-OAK etc.

A lot of trips I do start with 1 leg. Either LAX or FL, then the rest is mostly 2 a day (sometimes 3).

Given we are the largest airline (in terms of serving FL) I’d say 75%+ of all your trips will have flying in and out of FL. There are some west coast heavy trips, but a ton seem to find their way into and out of FL. So your going to be down here a lot. Both flying and overnights.

Hopefully that helps. Let me know if you have any more questions.

Thanks a lot for the thorough response! Just looking at the route map (rolling my eyes) doesn’t give you any idea of how they plan trips out, so I appreciate the feedback. Was curious if it was just a bunch of turns back to DTW or if you really got out into the whole system. Sounds like you get some good variety. My current airline doesn’t see much variety in my base, where the next base over basically goes to all the cities in our system.

Most trips here you leave base day 1 and don’t see it again till day 4 with the exception of FLL and MCO

Is there minimum days off for line holder and reserve on the contract?

On reserve
12 days off on a 30 day month
13 days off on a 31 day month


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

Thank you much!

As a line holder you can work as much or as little as you want. Most schedules tend to have 15-18 days off.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

Thanks as well! If you read over on other threads, some are saying the ability to drop trips naturally will depend on attrition and the net number of pilots coming in. So the pessimist in me wanted to know what the absolute minimum days off a line would contain. I hope I’m wrong and we never go down to those limits

Absolute min days off as a line holder is 13. If you are on a relief line it’s 15 days off.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

The main factor attrition would have is on seniority progression (although it would temporarily benefit a new hire today as they would likely move up the FO list a bit sooner).

The contract stipulates the company maintains a level of reserve coverage for 75% of the month in planning, which could result in more reserve lines during staffing issues, but they cannot reduce minimum days off.

New hire pilots this month are 61 spaces closer to a line than when they started class.

The presumption moving forward is that anyone who comes here 1) wants to be here and 2) understands that some pilots here may decide to move on. If Spirit is your goal it’s arguably a good time to join.

In the last 12 months, life for line holding captains and FOs has not changed drastically. The concern for the moment are junior captains and senior FOs who worry that a stagnation due to turnover would lengthen the time they sit reserve on the bottom of the captain list. Upgrade seniority is around 33% which is around 3-4 years (a case could be made that 1 year of that time was due to covid).

I don’t have a crystal ball, neither does anyone here. The turnover may continue for a few months, or it could fizzle out. A new hire today could see a bump in seniority and 3 years down the road we have a new contract and all this is a distant memory.

Sort of... Talk to some of the FO's on the bottom of the bidding list each month depending on the base. Little movement as people below them move on. From the time that Nav Blue opens vs. closes it's a different number.