Voting opened
 

No shade, vote your mind, the important thing is to have high participation no matter the outcome.

"Vote or die"

- Sean Combs

Thanks. Took all of about 20 seconds to…..

When does it close?

Week and half from now

Honestly conflicted.

First read-through was a hell no.

Listening to opinions on both sides reveal some interesting and compelling takes.

I guess, for me, what vote gets us to be Jet Blue faster? this place is a complete $hit show.

This entire vote is just a gamble. Do you believe that Spirit management will come right back to the table with a better offer, very quickly? Vote no. Do you think that they might just say screw it? Vote yes.

Neither, you’re stuck at Spirit until DOJ approves the merger (if it approves the merger at all). You’re likely looking at a 5 year timeline if not longer before you’re under a JCBA with JetBlue.

Vote like JetBlue merger won’t happen and you’ll be stuck with what you get for the rest of your career…

why would NK management ever come back to the table if DOJ wins (not just DOJ not supporting) merger with JB? Why not let NK become a shell and merge it with F9 with low labor costs plane orders and gates? If NK is about to collapse makes great argument for DOJ for F9 merger?

Spirit won’t survive in present form without a new contract attrition is too great and NH pay isn’t high enough. Vote this TA down and you’ll have a better agreement because management can’t afford not to give it. There’s only so many 750hr helicopter pilots around so they won’t be able to hire enough to change the tide.

It’s a tough vote. No right answer because no one has a crystal ball so everything is purely speculation.

1) We vote no and they drag their feet to come back to the table. Mainly because they’ll probably wait for the amendable date then it takes another 2-3 months for a better offer and another 1-1.5 months to bring it to a vote.

This will be happening while everyone goes into TPA (go into TPA with the current CBA?) so won’t be an expeditious process.

2) We vote no and we do get a better offer fast. This would be best case scenario, but no guarantee (obviously).

3) We vote yes, we take the pay and go into TPA and than JCBA. These rates would hold us over to really dig deep and claw for every penny on the JCBA.

4) We vote yes and the merger doesn’t go through. Go back to the table and negotiate from the new CBA rather than the old one.

Probably missed a scenario, but this is what comes to mind. We would be the highest paid ULCC for now (not counting JB as they’re a LCC, but quickly leaving that category).

Is voting down a $30-$40/hr pay raise for an additional $15/hr worth it (if even possible?)? Only the individual can answer that. I would just encourage everyone to get educated and vote what they feel is right. Good luck!

Spirit isn’t surviving in present form anyway. It’s bleeding money and pilots. It’s either going to JetBlue or frontier.

Vote yes, take the money in the short term and get more soon in the merger tpa and jcba

Thanks for the well-thought-out reply, much appreciated.

Bank the money and fight tomorrows fight, tomorrow.

But bank the money. This is free money, banked, and ours to get through the crap

This is an easy no without a JetBlue merger. Easy! The following steps of the merger and passing on easy money now certainly complicate things

Your number 4 scenario while factual has no ending. All leverage will be lost.

Not all leverage. This deal isn’t near enough to really help with attrition. At most, it’s a stopgap to help the bleeding for the next 6-12 months until it becomes jetblues problem. The leverage will not be lost.

I’m inclined to feel the same way if the merger wasn’t a thing. I would be worried if this was the best they could do for an offer during the current climate.

Honestly, I haven’t given much thought to your second point, but I don’t disagree with it

Exactly what leverage do we have now that we wouldn't have later?!

Well right now we have the lowest first year pay in the industry.

Assuming this TA passes, first year pay will inevitably be moved up to industry leading or very close to it.

So there's that...

If first year pay was what they are so desperate to change (the so-called leverage) then why didn't they raise first year right away on this TA? I think they are going more for retention than attracting.

Ding ding we have a winner

Company is so concerned about first year pay that they did NOT flat increase it in this TA when they could, union wanted to. They also didn’t move training pay much at all

Doesn’t seem like they are half as concerned as some pilots are.

Bank the money, move on to the next fight

Vote how you want to, and what is best for you. But FFS stop talking about tomorrow's fight. Health insurance during training, training pay, first year pay and slope are fights we have lost for over a decade. I might vote yes, because I am not sure if we can do better. That doesn't make all the other issues tomorrow's fight. It means I will take my gains over other people's loss.

Fight tomorrows fight as in we have multiple rounds of negotiations still to go, either with JBLU, NK, or maybe F9 and/or a combination of those. Guys acting like this is the vote to take a stand on, a 2 year contract, nope. Exactly why I’m taking the money now, free cash, and realizing the big items to actually “fight” are to come in the next steps.

Sorry but as much as I want more money for newhires, the company doesn’t even want to pay more, and they are the ones supposed to be “begging” for pilots, and last I checked, attracting pilots is still their problem

“the company doesn’t even want to pay more “

But they agreed to pay us more. And not out of the kindness of their hearts. They calculate how much they need to offer to get 51%. And in the last contract they ended up over paying, as it was over 70% voted yes. How that money is spread around is up to us. Calling training pay tomorrow’s fight is disingenuous at best. Yes, we can take that money now, but we didn’t take a stand last time, and not doing it now, so probably won’t happen next time.

Section 9 is the big change no one talks about for some reason

Great, and you can vote your vote and I’ll do the same, as will all non probationary pilots. The 10th will come and we will see how it shook out. Hopefully the merger gets worked out sooner vs later, and Ted and Bendo go off into the mist

Not all of us want to be instructors to make decent bank…. That said, I am grateful those punks will finally have to bid their own seniority and not be able to cherry-pick trips…

Get out there and vote yessssss.

Maybe I’m misunderstanding what you’re saying, but doesn’t the table show $93 and some change for first year pay? I know training pay was a joke of an increase, but looks like first year was adjusted relatively well.

They are talking about how at the companies discretion they can continue to increase pay to 98% of 2nd year pay. This is only going to really happen if in the next 3-6 months they don’t see any improvement in the filling of classes with the new rate. They’ll raise it again to attract more people.

I believe the biggest hindrance is training pay. I know people that can’t afford to come to NK even though they liked too. Idk why the company didn’t think that through.

What are other companies training pay policies? Jet blue was $2000/mo but idk if that increase with their TA. Don’t know anything about the legacy training pay either.

I believe AA and UAL are first year times guarantee. Delta was 5200 per month but unclear what the new AIP states. Over at F9 it’s first year times 75 hours.

Probably because it doesn't cost the company anything to try out the new rates first and slide up from there if they determine it would benefit them. We get nothing for that btw.

We should have at least negotiated some sort of snap up in the event they want to bump up first year pay by 45%

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My biggest problem with this TA is the attitude from both the union and many members of the pilot group, some even posting on here. As someone else mentioned, there is way too much emphasis on "tomorrow's fight" and "the next bite out of the apple" and so on, so forth.

It seems like there is this big change in attitude that we keep procrastinating, but oh it's going to happen, just not today.

But when does it though?

This was all made clear during the road shows.

Union said they want 72 hours and first year pay for training.

Company said “fine, that’s on your side of the table, so it’s a cost the union incurs.”

NC said “child please”

Company said “we don’t have problems attracting pilots, regardless of APC lore, we have issues retaining pilots”

NC says “you do you, boo, but we are already getting hit with $90m over 2 years in just the first year pay increase, we are not subtracting from other areas to add”

The company said they believe this will get enough pilots to staff the 500 they need next year, the met their hiring needs this year and plan to hire over 1000 to meet their 500 for next year.

Why line pilots seem more concerned with the number of apps on file when we don’t even see the stack, and they do, I just still don’t get it.

But feel free to vote no if you think the company will come back and offer more for training while not sticking with the cost being carried by the pilot side of the deal. That’s a fools errand for me.


Something else to ponder;

Even IF the company comes back and wants to talk. And even IF we get a new deal and it’s approved for vote, road shows etc, you have to ask if you think the new TA2 rates
will be more than TA1 DOS+1 rates. Because that’s pretty much how the timeline would be close to ending up.

Hey, that’s me! ✋

If you haven’t heard when it’s going to “happen,” I honestly don’t know what else to say. The path has literally been laid out.

This is a 2 year deal, wasting at least 25% of the duration for probably no increase, while opportunity costs of this contract, can’t do.

But sometimes you have to walk down the hill and screw all the cows vs running down to screw 1.

We need to vote No, recall the NC go after them on reserve rules and PS. We will drag this crap out for years if we need to! Let’s fight the good fight!!

Gotcha. Thanks.

UAL is first year rate at 90 hours per month (3 hours per day assigned to a syllabus). And 24 hour per diem.