The question is, does the negotiating committee care more about securing significant gains, or do they care about helping management with timeliness? From what i gathered from the Q&A, they are more concerned with timeliness and helping out management. I expect a very weak deal to be presented, and sold as "better than nothing" and "look at those first year gains." I do not expect a section 3 top rate exceeding Alaska because they've all but said that in the Q&A, but it better not be a Sun Country-type deal either.

 

If people actually submitted the survey, the NC shouldn’t be shocked by what our expectations are. And subsequently, if they try to pass along a substandard deal, vote no.

 

The way I see it, we aren’t negotiating our contract, we are setting the price we are charging management to raise first year pay until we actually finish negotiating the CBA. These won’t be final rates, but it may help with recruitment and it takes the sting of inflation off the rest of us

Management has stipulated attrition is a problem, so there is a time issue, which is why both sides agreed to a narrow focus of only five issues. So what you have to decide is what your price is to allow first year pay to be increased. If it’s Alaska + $1 fine, if it’s a certain percentage fine, the point is that it’s an interim raise while the real CBA is hashed out, which can take years.

It’s like eating your fries while they are hot after leaving the drive thru, you are still going to eat the whole burger when you get home.

 

There’s lots of pilots here with low expectations of what we’re worth.

 

Maybe we shouldn’t have set their expectations so low with the pi$$-poor first year pay? Maybe if their fellow pilots had treated them like the professionals they are, they would think better of themselves - and the pilot group as a whole?

But what is done is done. No changing that perception now. All you can do is tell them what this is really about is pattern bargaining. AS has set the pattern, and you’ll sell out the industry if you agree on any less. Nor can you expect the B6 guys to fight for our work rules if we don’t hold up our end on payscale.

 

I am referring to senior captains I fly with.

 

Well that’s just sad. Unless they are retiring in the next 18 months, this ought to be their chance to prosper.

 

The rest of the burger is the rest of the CBA in a comprehensive JCBA. Things like work rules. If management wants their problems fixed they know what the market is and it comes with a me too clause as well. I’m not responsible for fixing the problem they created. They know how to fix it and it doesn’t take years of negotiating. Pay is black and white, not nuanced. This could get done in one day followed by a vote.

 

Are Spirit and Jetblue both projecting profit this quarter?

 

I believe Spirit revised last quarter and does not expect a return to profitability until second half 2023, but that would only occur if they can get control of attrition, which it has not.

From TC Q2 conference call:
"As we've discussed before, we are still operating at suboptimal productivity levels with total fleet utilization around 2 hours per airplane less than our 2019 levels. We've built an efficiency-based franchise that maximizes earnings with optimized utilization of assets and labor. The carrying cost of underutilized assets, human capital and lack of capacity production are delaying our return to run rate profitability levels. However, once we reach a more traditional utilization level, we're confident in our ability to deliver normal operating margins. The expected time line to achieve that goal will, in part, depend on the infrastructure that supports the aviation industry, most notably the ability to fully deploy our schedule to and from Florida."

"Network growth achievements were capped with fantastic news of the DOT's decision to grant Spirit all 16 available takeoff and landing allocations at Newark Airport, which when fully utilized, gives us up to 45 departures from the New York Metropolitan area. Two, return to peak utilization and profitability. For utilization, our expectation was to deliver this by year-end 2022. But after experiencing how the ATC has operated this summer, coupled with our new crew planning strategies, it seems more prudent to target the summer of 2023. Full restoration of profit margins will, as we indicated, return once this target is achieved."