The JCBA has a backstop of binding arbitration, does it not? You may not get to cast your no vote.

Spirit hasn’t posted a profit since Covid yet, and Frontier airlines barely posted a profit.

are we really expecting some kind of substantial gains??? I mean let’s hope so but I don’t know if we get too far ahead of ourselves

What I’m worth is exclusive of how they decide to run the rest of their business to make profits. They don’t ask the gas man to pay less to make profits happen. They pay for the fuel whatever the cost so the airplanes continue to move. Same for us IMO

Okay, but where are they going to get the money to pay you what your worth? If they themselves aren’t turning a profit or barely

Name an airline that went bankrupt due to pilot salaries?

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.the...ptcy-cut-costs

good read. Although I must admit I hate the Guardian.

You realize cutting (or not increasing) pilot salaries doesn’t put us back in the black right?

We are a variable cost, and while yes we are an expensive cost, we are certainly not what is standing in the way of profitability. The more we flights we operate, the more money they make.

Also, Spirit turning massive profits is not the goal, we have a high plow back ratio, which means we put a lot of money back into the company to fuel growth rather than pay shareholders dividends. As long as our bills are paid and we have some operating cash on hand, we don’t expect to turn a massive profit as it all goes towards driving growth.

If we can’t make our obligations, we would have to take on more and more debt, which some airlines did to cover operational expenses. We used cheap govt money which was smart, but we didn’t get over burdened like AA.

Obviously these are very broad strokes, but the point is anyone who tries to rationalize low contract expectations on the belief that Spirit can’t afford to pay us is misinformed.

Did you actually read the article? They filed BK right after making a $38B aircraft order. The article even stated it was a targeted attempt to void labor contracts….what it did NOT say is that labor contracts caused the BK.

So they’re not going to increase costs without passing it on the the consumer. The math that leads to a $50/hr increase per seat results in an unnoticeable price increase for the passengers. And everyone is about to do it.

You would think that the small increase in CASM for a competitive pilot pay scale pales in comparison to the drop in RASM for cancellations and underutilization of new aircraft deliveries.

QUESTION from an F9 guy. Does your training cadre (sim and line check airman) have their union LEC and is there language in your CBA addressing that? My old ALPA regional had such an LEC. I don’t have your current CBA handy anymore.

Edit: just found your FEB2018 Tentative Agreement. Reading Section 9 now. Looks like it’s all spelled out and is bargained by the union. That’s great we literally have a couple guys in standards and training that can’t get anywhere with the VP of Flt Ops to adjust our rates, which are close yours but we both trail the industry average. Our lack of language for training cadre is leftover from our FAPA (in-house union) days where we drew a line between our training and union guys, so the union never negotiated language in the contract for training staff.

Seems like it got lost in the merger craziness, but more alignment between F9 and NK. NK joins the 1500 hour club with their “Spirt Direct” program with ATP, while F9 has been doing this with Purdue for a while. Legacies might be sucking up all the ULCC pilots but the ULCCs aren’t going to leave anything for the regionals. Looks like the race for flight school partnerships is on, I give regionals 12-18months left.

F9 has had something with ATP since before covid. Just Spirit continuing to align forces with its new master :-).

Both sides have to agree to arbitration, ALPA would never agree to arbitration. It’s always turned town

Virgin and Alaska did go to arbitration for their JCBA. I don’t remember why bc yes arbitration has to be agreed to in normal section 6 negotiations

Your training pilots are not represented within ALPA even at their base LEC? Are they considered management? Maybe I misunderstood what you were saying.

You better not go over to the AA forum and try to spread that logic 😳😳

They've both paid off a ton of debt and cleaned up the balance sheets. Both companies are healthy. It makes sense to do that when investors are expecting a loss alresdy and you get a tax break.

Raise ticket prices or other revenue an unrecognizable amount. This isn’t a regional with a fixed income. They can grow revenue if they’re good at their job. Also, with crazy inflation the contract will have to be even bigger to realize the same buying power it would have had a year ago. Everyone in the country is paying more for everything. A few bucks on an airline ticket even for our price conscious passengers won’t be questioned. They will pay it.

They paid the C suite literally tens of millions of dollars just for the work to make the deal happen and get it closed. Sorry if I don’t care where they get the money for us from. That’s their job. Our job is to go in and get what’s ours and to make it as big as possible. It’s not our job to rationalize if it’s possible. That their job.

Regionals seem to be like a collapsing soap bubble. They are losing so many CAs that they won’t be able to fly enough to give the FOs enough experience to become CAs. Just look at the bonuses some regionals are offering for DECs and near 1000 121 hour near-DECs. There are going to be a lot of quasi-experienced regional FOs starting over at the bottom of the seniority list at another airline soon when their regional folds. If it were me I’d damn sure rather it was NK or F9 rather than another regional where I’d be worrying about repeating the process when their CAs all got hired away too.

Sim Instructors, Sim Check Airmen, and Line Check all stay on the seniority list, and are marked no bids for “Training” for those specific months, they can go back to the line any month they want. Our jobs as line pilots on the seniority list are protected and represented by the union, however there is no language for us regarding compensation regarding training duties, in the sim or on line performing OE or line checks. That said we have very good people in charge of sim checks and standards so it’s not one of those places you don’t want to be. However, collectively negotiating our rates isn’t something that the union handles; quite honestly it needs to.

I could be off in my recollection, but I think Alaska allowed arbitration in their CBA. Virgin I don’t think had a CBA.

Instructors were approached multiple times in negotiations over crafting training language. There was a group that didn’t want to be included in the contract. I’m going to guess they didn’t want to have handcuffs placed on them in respect to max hrs, trading slots amongst themselves, ect…. Having said that I agree, they need to be included.

Correct.

Filler and *******.

AA is in the ****tiest financial position of anyone, and we fully expect a new contract soon (whether that happens or not who knows, but regardless we expect it) The company has already agreed to significant gains, it just remains to be seen what that ends up looking like.

Point is, you can't run or expand the airline without pilots, and in today's environment the only way to keep classes full is for the company to open the pocketbook.

True.

And others have said, not my F’in problem where the money comes from, let Bendo beg for cash at the red lights. Pilots are more expensive, that’s their problem. Just like in years past when contracts were gutted and we had a surplus of pilots was our problem.

FUPM

Damn, that’s twice we’ve agreed now. That’s almost scary.

But yeah, if it’s really a better business model it ought to be able to support a competitive pay scale - even for new hires.

McDonalds was forced to increase pay to $20/hr in some spots to get workers….McDonalds. So if Ronald McDonald can afford these raises out of necessity, no different.

100% agree👆👆👆
they still try to find cheap ways to solve the problem. ( creativity is important, listen to the market and think of new ways to tell our stories……) WTF is this

My neighbor is a cop, and before I step on my d*ck talking smack about cops, he’s not the front lines, chasing down scum, dodging bullets, getting attacked by meth’d up tweakers cop.

He’s the back office, light duty, hey is it possible to get the hazelnut flavor coffee mate creamer cop. He’s the rack up the overtime working the county fair, Boy Scout parade, and weekend outlet mall parking lot cop. He’s the almost got us kicked out of the shooting range for flashing innocent civilians, and me, one too many times. I bought him a rape whistle for Xmas, for those who get the reference.

With overtime and benefits, he pulled down over 230k last year. It’s all available online.

Either we get paid this contract or I’m quitting and joining the sheriffs office.

My McDonalds went to kiosks except for the drive through and one counter. Six kiosks, two humans. Kiosks, after initial capital cost are $0 per hour. And those other workers they replaced now get $20/hr at 0 hrs = $0.

Kind of a false equivalency. McDonalds didn’t go in and say “sorry to the 4 of you, we are letting you go for Kiosks. They just didn’t backfill those jobs with the high turnover for fast food. And there are plenty of McDonald’s and fast food restaurants with many employees working behind the counter, getting paid way more than ever before.

It’s not really their choice right now in my opinion. They either pay or go under. There’s a going rate and that’s what will be asked for. And they don’t even really have time to fight it either. They aren’t dumb they knew this when they agreed to merge.

the New Spirit/Frontier colors revealed!!!

https://www.instagram.com/p/CZrR1CDO...dium=copy_link

What? You going for the hat trick on agreements? You got it.

And if inflation is going to continue at the present rate, we really need to think about indexing the pay scale to the CPI or some other index. Social Security does that, Military retirement does that. Heck, even bank lines of credit go for LIBOR plus however many points.

While I would like to think that inflation is going to mellow out after the supply chains get fixed, even just two years at 7.5% is a huge hit. Imagine if it were to last five years without renegotiation….

Don't be so quick to dance on their grave. The same thing will happen to pilots.

the same engineers that made the 737 MAX are going to be the ones that make it happen, right?

https://img.huffingtonpost.com/asset..._970_noupscale

This is what Amazon looked like 20 years ago when they were selling books on a new thing called the internet. Around the time this screenshot was taken, there were quite a few FEs on mainline aircraft. What happened to those guys?

They moved to a First officer position, then captain then retired and read books from Amazon after their retirement.

We need to get paid and get our 401ks stuffed before the robots take our jobs.