that or they break the trip up if it’s a 4 day. Give the single day to X or y then try to find a reserve from any base to fly the rest of the trip, mean while you miss out on a sweet 4 day with good layovers.

 

Same in DTW forced into bailing to attempt a better QOL. And I'm not the only one leaving DTW.

 

It's really remarkable to me that they chose pilot displacements at this time considering the turnover that's happening in the industry. It's my opinion that our management group is so driven by a spreadsheet that they have tremendously hurt our ability to turn a profit. For example, selling the 319's. Whatever their reason, AA and UA are running around in decades old 319's with CRT screens, much older than ours, and working them hard. I'm sure on a spreadsheet, they saw a way to gain some capital with the sale and remove some maintenance liabilities from the operation too. But, it wasn't too long ago AA was pulling 140's and 145's out of the desert to park on gates in DFW to keep us from growing there. So they sold off some planes, made a few bucks, but now we need them. We're parking planes left and right because of an "unforeseeable" issue with our NEO's. Our management is running away left and right from any competition with the big 4. They've lost their teeth. No bite.

Management displaced a bunch of pilots, radically changed our trip dynamics, and sold off a bunch of capacity. So now, we've essentially stagnated in the biggest hiring boom this industry has ever seen.

 

Which is exactly why I’ll be glad to see them go. These fools have been rudderless for a few years, just useless.

I’ll also add, they could have deferred these NEOs during Covid but instead committed to taking all of them (they admit now that wasn’t a good decision) while scheduling the 319 returns. So here we are, flying 319s back to the bank while moving brand new Neos to the ramps to sit engineless until 2024 or 2025.

 

These ARE the worst trips ever, I was assigned them often on DFW reserve. The circadian flip is tough enough but also good luck day sleeping at our selected hotels.

The way these pairings made you feel was awful. Very unhealthy.

 

What did the displacements accomplish exactly? Our DOT performance metrics are as bad as ever. LAS is a staffing quagmire with way more captains than first officers resulting in 40% or greater captains being on reserve in any month.

Now they are saying we are overstaffed for Q1 2024 and forward. I sure hope they offer LOA's so those of us who need a break from this place and its toxic management.

 

It’s called burning the furniture.

I will say I love the new trip mix. It’s much more even and the majority of the pilot group drives to work. We have a reasonable verity now compared to all min credit four days two years ago.

 

Oh man, I would love LOAs.

Normally I would say the paid LOAs we saw during Covid were going to be a once in a career event. But...I could see LOAs for CAs because of this engine issues. Furloughs only makes sense over a certain amount of time, a longer time frame, and we should not see that with these engines. Pratt said they are going to "make Spirit whole", whatever that means, so there would be money coming back (I assume) for the direct result of the groundings.

So it would not surprise me to take a few hundred CAs off the books for 4-6 months of 2024 while they deal with this, for some LOA pay, knowing that its cheaper than being over staffed, cheaper than furloughs, and cheaper if you can have a financial line item (LOA pilots on leave cost) to present to Pratt on the economic impacts. As for FOs, still way too much churn with attrition to allow any to take LOAs.

 

Sign me up.

A few of us were positing the same thoughts the other day, between NEO engines and then depending on the merger timeline it’s possible there could be over staffing as yellow draws down and pilots and crew are incrementally moved to blue ops. I’d happily sit that out on covid LOA terms and jump on the last car of the train once they have all the kinks worked out.

 

Ive heard of people at the Big 4 doing this for premium pay to boost their credit. Is there actually a monetary benefit to doing it at Spirit, or are you dropping and rebuilding purely for a better schedule?