If this gets approved, when will the B6SPAChokers website go active?

Besides the fact that a 2011 hire gets placed next to a 2016 Spirit pilot, it is very likely that those Spirit guys hired well after the same relative JB pilot are younger, so would affect a JB pilots future movement disproportionately.

A list like AS/VA with 60/40 longevity/relative is a good compromise and a recent precedent.

This is all very true and correct. JB is FAR from stagnant right now.

BS. The average age is still the average. Guys hired 5 years after me will be statistically significantly younger than me. Just reality.

Final list will probably be very close to the AK/VA 60/40. The final company will have about 8,000 (JB will have 5,000 by the end of THIS year) pilots, be approaching SWA in size, will need a joint CBA during a great time for pilots, be adding Transatlantic and probably transpacific. The airline does seem to want a more national footprint, so I don't see base closings likely. Good compromise and opportunity for everyone.

F9 pilot here. Looking at a nk isl. I was in the high 600’s doh and near 1000 relative. I looked at those two numbers and figured I’d be somewhere in between and moved on. Time to focus on a jcba. Now it might be that was a waste of time.

I don’t think his/her personal expectation of how they think the SLI should happen is the same as career expectations.

Honest question, I haven’t been keeping up in the news lately. Has JetBlue talked about getting WB? You said transpacific, so I’m assuming WB in the future? Correct me if I’m wrong, but a A321XLR can’t do 12-14 which is what you would need to even do LAX to NRT or even PEK with reserve.

I can’t find anywhere from ALPA merger policy that describes taking recent precedent into account.

FWIW It’s more like 70-80 hired in 90’s.

He’s probably using that term to describe Hawaii routes.

Fortunately for the rest of you at Blue there’s no threat from me bidding for 8-10+ hour routes on a narrow body with no crew rest bunk plodding along at .77 Mach. Have at it and send me a postcard.

They have talked about wide-bodies, but I was referring to HI.

The arbitrator will.

I guess too bad for the top 80-90 JB. Can't screw most of the entire other 4,400 pilots to save them. Some want relative, some want longevity. The recent AK/VA merger, both ALPA I believe, was 60/40. A good compromise to give both some of what they want. Will be a very strong company afterwards, set up well to get a great contract and be successful.

40/60. Final offer 😂😂

Based on current orders the Seniority list after merger grows 61% on the NK/B6 deal and 124% on the NK/F9 deal. Only B6 is already planning on parking the 190 fleet and F9 is already 95% done updating its fleet, so in reality it’s further apart than these numbers suggest. Both merged entities will find a way to staff their airline, the market will force them to be competitive. I think the future remains bright for every airline that doesn’t start with the letter “A” (and has a balance sheet that shows negative equity).

Either way, I think you Spirit guys will land on your feet. Good Luck!

“In terms of immediate fleet size, a JetBlue-Spirit merger would create a fleet of 458 planes. Spirit-Frontier would be somewhat smaller, at 288 planes. The ultimate fleet size (combined between current fleet and future orders) however would be very similar, with 741 for a JetBlue win against 647 against Frontier.”

https://simpleflying.com/spirit-fron...blue-analysis/

You guys are making this SLI thing way too hard. It’s simple.

1. Advocate your position to your reps
2. Unions both advocate their positions to the arbitrator
3. Arbitrator decides
4. Pilot groups accept it and move on as one big, cohesive group.

No matter what your think is fair (obviously based on your own situation), you’re not gonna win over the other side (or the arbitrator, for that matter) on a forum and it only serves to divide the group from the start.

NK plans are to sell the airline.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Another nugget from the most recent binding SLI decision.

F. Relative Seniority
Relative seniority, in various guises, involves determining a pilot’s relative position on his pre-merger seniority list and trying to duplicate that position on the merged list. Described another way, if a pilot is at the 50th percentile on the pre-merger list, the goal of relative seniority is to place the pilot at the 50th percentile of the new list. While relative seniority has surfaced from time to time in previous pilot seniority integration arbitration disputes, the concept is not a mandatory factor under the ALPA policy and has not been adopted as a critical factor in any previous pilot seniority list integrations involving major carriers. Relative seniority contradicts the concept of longevity. While the Board considered the relative seniority charts that are part of the record in this case, the Board concludes that relative seniority is not a significant consideration in determining the method for merging the Alaska and Virgin America lists.



G. Static Fleet Versus Dynamic Fleet Assumptions
Arbitration decisions integrating pilot seniority lists typically rely on fleet assumptions that are static on the snapshot date. By doing so, Arbitration Boards are able to see the implications of various methods for integrating the pilot work force on the workforce as it actually existed on the announced date of the merger, as contrasted to a work force determined by hypothetical assumptions about aircraft count, pilot behavior, and other merger related variables. In this case, for example, the parties presented multiple and inconsistent fleet projections. Those projections were simply predictions made at a certain date, using different assumptions, and presented to different audiences. None of them provides a reliable guide to the future. ALPA Merger Policy cautions that “merger representatives should recognize the difficulty of forecasting what will occur well into the future” [JX 1,p. 4].

While the fleet size, number of pilots, and status and longevity of pilots on the separate lists will continue to change after the snapshot date, many of those changes will be directly related to the merger. Using the snapshot date as the measuring stick for various merged lists helps to keep post-merger driven considerations from unfairly impacting the IPSL in either direction. Fleet assumptions are important because the size of the fleet determines the number of pilot jobs, the status of the jobs, the opportunities for advancement and other factors important to a pilot’s everyday work life. The Virgin America Committee argues that the Alaska fleet will most certainly grow over the next few years and urges the Board to consider several different, future fleet sizes in determining a fair and equitable seniority list. The Board disagrees. Unlike future fleet projections which may be too high, too low, or dead on, the size of the fleet on the snapshot date is ascertainable and definite. Using a static fleet analysis as of the snapshot date allows the Board to determine the impact of various formulas for merging the lists without reliance on speculative merger driven fleet size assumptions. In the final analysis, when a merged list is implemented and the fleet subsequently grows, all pilots will benefit from the opportunities presented by that growth, even if the benefit varies from pilot to pilot.

Great info, thank you ShyGuy. Is the entire document available online somewhere?

For extra credit, does anyone consider the AS-VX merger to be successful? It seems that all AS got (or at least kept) was the senior VX CAs. The VX aircraft are mostly gone and the remaining VX aircraft will likely be gone by 2023. The JFK base was closed and east coast slots and gates sold, leased. Or abandoned. And they continue to bleed FOs to the legacies.

Seems like all they did was kneecap a competitor at a huge cost.

Agree. JB wanted to do a lot more with VA assets and markets. Alaska wanted... to keep JB off the west coast...

That merger was about self preservation. They didn't want JB to get VA more than they wanted VA themselves.

If you look at it through the lens of what they got out of it and kept…no, not really successful. If you look at it through the lens of what they would be vs what B6 would have been relative to what each is today, specifically with regards to the west coast (and its connections to JFK), yeah, it mostly served its purpose, albeit at a high cost. Then B6 mostly got what it wanted slot/gate wise during covid anyway, and AS unwound it, so it ended up working out ok for B6 anyway. The merger would have just accelerated it. So in the end, probably a wash. But it was successful at impeding a competitor from encroaching.

Wait until the Spirit merger committee proposes upgrade fences to protect the career expectations to upgrade on the current Spirit aircraft book they are bringing in.

Yeah, I'd agree. I was forced to move from NJ to CA when the NYC base closed. Now I drive to LAX. Since I had CAs junior to me on the west coast, when the base closed I was able to displace into a Bus CA seat at LA. And as Busses were being parked, I got displaced again into Guppy CA at LA. Of course I wish it would have been VX + B6. All the Buses would still be around and we would have maximized the route network and been a nice, strong national carrier. All things considered, not bad. Could have been worse (flown with many guys from Aloha, ATA, Skybus, etc) who were basically forced to start over. Nor did we get Airtran'ed.

They can propose that all they'd like, there is no recent SLI precedent for narrowbody fences.


Here is the SLI decision for AS/VX for those that asked...


https://pdfhost.io/v/2ESswD.yk_arbitrationaward

For what it’s worth I don’t want the merger. The access unlimited cheezits will be really bad for me. Those are my weakness. So for sake my waistline this merger must not happen.

Possibly unrealistic but I'm hoping DOJ blocks both proposals and we all remain separate.

Under pure DOH merge
Median gain for JetBlue pilot is 6.82%, Median loss for Spirit Pilot is 10.4% - that is a 17.2% Spread

Extreme inequality - October 2011 DOH at both airlines, Spirit pilot loses 18% while JetBlue pilot gains 11.9% - Thats a 30% spread

2127 (73%) Spirit pilots lose more than 5%, while not a single one gains more than 2%
2865 (60%) JetBlue pilots gain more than 5%, while not a single one loses more than 1.1%

Whoa Nelly!
Read ALPA section 45 on SLI. It is specifically intended to not favor one group vs the other. I think the SLI will be much closer to relative seniority than DOH

Read the Alaska VA ISL decision he posted. Read the positions of 3 professional arbitrators on how all 3 criteria were weighed. DOH will never happen under an ALPA merger, neither will straight Rel Seniority. Because either one ignores the other 2 criteria. Its a good read, worth the 20 minutes of time.

Yeah I got a little depressed reading it....

Under straight DOH, I’d lose 17.2% while the blue pilots ahead of me gain north of 12%…. And, fwiw, I never applied to JetBlue back in the day cause they are an east coast airline, and I already paid my dues in Boston & New York, thanks.

just skimmed through it. One positive note I took away, is that B6 and NK have a much much closer seniority list than VX and Alaska did. And our CBA’s are probably closer too. I would think an arbitrator would not favor DOH in our situation as much as they did in Alaska’s. Maybe 60% relative and 40% DOH.

why does DOH matter. If he’s same percentage. Nothings changed.

Future senoirty changes.

F9er here! What is the upgrade time at JetBlue been and at present time?

Both JB and NK have the same amount of future orders, obviously since NK is smaller theirs is bigger percentage growth....however....precedence per the VA/AS SLI below is they don't really look at future orders.

Unlike future fleet projections which may be too high, too low, or dead on, the size of the fleet on the snapshot date is ascertainable and definite. Using a static fleet analysis as of the snapshot date allows the Board to determine the impact of various formulas for merging the lists without reliance on speculative merger driven fleet size assumptions

2-3 years on the 190 and 3.5-6 years on the 320. That’s held fairly steady, the exception being the LGB->LAX displacement bid during covid. But, through all the recent bids it’s mostly back there. Junior 190 CA awarded is Nov 2019 hire. He got awarded it back in august. Most junior awarded 320 CA is July 2017. Their training is I think in September or October.

Last bid CA awarded to 8/17 and 5/19 hires (Bus and 190), not sure about 220. Has varied over the years but in recent times relatively close to those numbers.