Spirit diminishing QOL fact or rumor
 

From what I have read here in the forums the QOL and ability to drop down to zero by pilots have always been a great attractant to Spirit airlines. Recently on facebook I have been getting ads from spa.alpha.org that is basically bashing Spirit and talking about a rapidly diminishing QOL to pilots, saying some pilots are not even getting scheduled the guaranteed monthly minimum hours or days off that they were scheduled for. Is there any truth to this?

Drop to zero and 4 days off is still a thing. What they’re talking about is if you end up getting rescheduled into working a day off that puts you below min days off. The company has recently decided to interpret that they don’t have to give you another day off if that happens.

personally, I’ve experienced zero QOL changes. I can drop my whole schedule and rebuild it myself every month without issue. Minimum guarantee, drop to zero and reserve grid protection are contractual so they can’t just be changed or not honored on a whim.

Lineholders at NK have it pretty damn good. Reserve rules are going to need some improvement in the JCBA.

It may not be a zero sum game but much of that "pretty damn good" is on the backs of the "need some improvement" reserve rules.

no you got it right. The essence of seniority based schedules, is zero sum, definitionally. Thats why reserve wont improve substantively. Airline Pilots idea of class solidarity is "you'll be senior someday son" lol.

Context is important, Spirit went through its exponential growth phase over several contracts where time on reserve as a new hire or upgrade captain was minimal. I talked with a captain the other day who never did a single day of reserve at Spirit on either seat. Using negotiating capital on retooling the lackluster reserve rules wasn’t a high priority during these years.

Attrition has kept new hire reserve time low in the junior bases, but the reality of spending significant time on reserve in the senior bases as an FO and anywhere on the left seat post merger is going to be a real thing. Obviously green grids and drops are contingent on a robust reserve group, however lifestyle improvements could be made to reserve without having to sacrifice all the QOL that line holders enjoy.

Why does reserve have to be just for the junior seniority? If reserve has good work rules then it goes senior, which provides more lineholder opportunities for junior pilots who may commute and just want a real schedule.

What is a “senior” schedule? High credit day trips? Commutable 4day? 24hr layover in AUA 2day? It’s subjective and we each have our own priority. Mine (and many others at JB) chose RSV and will fight to get the best work rules as possible. Everything is important.

IIRC reserve at Southwest has 15 days off a month... Just saying...

Well I may be a minority here - but I love my reserve schedule. I work a max of five reserve shifts - have all day off the last day of the reserve shift, have four full days off, and can easily commute in for my first day back on reserve. Get called in MAYBE once a week. Beats reserve life at the regional 100 percent. I truly don’t see myself doing anything else.

Which, as I’ve said, need improvement.

Yeah, I'd say A LOT depends on your seniority and whether or not you live in base.

Personally, I would say things here have changed dramatically for a subset of pilot in the past year and a half. Base reductions have pushed some of us to commuting. That commuting has led to perpetual reserve with a 5 or 6 day reserve block. This commuting takes us to sitting around in a city that we do not live in, waiting to be called for a day turn or a two day trip with a 3 hour callout. So there's a group of us that are pretty miserable once they made these radical changes to flying schedule from 3 and 4 day trips to 1, 2, and 3 day trips with on top of that seeing very little growth or movement within the company during that same time.

I would say FO's are going to be pretty happy with QOL since there's so much movement. Captains with lines are going to be consistently happy with things. Reserve here is total garbage for any commuter.

Commuting to reserve is total garbage anywhere, but yeah, currently living that life and hating it. A line here will be a game changer.

Not wrong. But there are a lot of commuters out there who willingly chose to commute. What he’s talking about are those who had it pretty decent only to be forced into poor qol. Reserve can definitely be better at other carriers. Having the ability to pick up or bid for left over trips rather than waiting to randomly be assigned is common else where.

Some context from JB.

I live in base and I happen to like our reserve system and bid it on purpose. Could there be improvements, sure. I have bid a line twice this year(so say 130 hours of flight time in those two months) and yet here we are in august and I have a total of 207 block hours for the entire year. My QOL is pretty damn good.

Last year finished with just over 300
Both the Covid years were under 100, but that’s an anomaly
2019 was 270.

We can have a reserve system that goes senior enough(especially in bases where people live) that only those who want it get it. There was a couple times in years passed where the most junior pilot was junior maned into a line in September and October in MCO.

The only way to make reserve at spirit go senior again would be to allow reserve drops (outside-in, not checkerboarding) and to allow reserve pilots to pick up open time.

Hopefully included in the JCBA.

PU for reserve inside of 48 hours, yes.

Whats the concenus about out of base pickup? What's Industry standard? Jetblue?

Reserves can pick up Premium (150%) trips from Flica when available right up to 3.5hrs before report time.

Reserves can also pick up trips on their days off, but it only goes toward meeting the 75hr monthly guarantee (you’re working for free). Sometimes it comes into play if you’ve had a busy month on RSV and will break guarantee.

Global opentime is in our CBA, but it requires the company to place a trip into a global OT pot and I’ve never seen or heard of anyone actually picking anything up from it.

That doesnt seem like a bad system, do you guys like it?

What about dropping reserve days?

I think it's dumb because reserves are reserves. Allowing 150% pickups reduces the pool of potential 200% X trips for lineholders, effectively jumping seniority in my eyes. Assign the trip to someone on reserve or call someone for an X if scheduling cant staff. A better option would be to first allow spirit pilots to actually bid RAPs by seniority, and then have a better system than the 'call me first' system, that honors seniority for 'specific' trips available inside 24 hours. Reserves straight picking up open time is a NO from me whether on a rap or off day. Do XY like everyone else. There is no provision preventing reserves from listing for X or Y on off days, just like lineholders. That is fair.

I think within 48hr first come first serve pick up by a reserve is fair but a seniority based pick up would be good too. Just somehow allow reserves to choose a preferred trip rather than waiting for a random assignment that fits their rap if it’s within the 48hr window where line holders can’t pick it up in open time. Would rather see that than allowing reserves to drop r days. Dropping r days would likely turn the grid red most days of the month.

And this is correct and while i dont care that checkerboarding is gone, exactly because it screwed lineholders on red green. Yeah yeah it was senior guys bidding reserve doing it, dont care. It was dumb.

There will have to be some compromise for reserve life, for the past several contracts the narrative has been “you spend a couple months on reserve as a new hire and a couple months as an upgrade and the rest of your career as a line holder and life is good, why waste negotiating capital on reserve rules?”. That’s may still hold true for some bases for FO’s, but upgrades will see much longer times on reserve, especially merging with B6.

Reserve pickups inside 48 hours when the grid is green is a no-brainer, let the guys who want to fly on reserve fly, and let them have a chance to fly the trips they prefer instead of waiting and hoping. There could also be some way to effort limited reserve drops without undermining the grid for line holders.

Every reserve day at Southwest is shortcall, just saying!

Whatever the end resent we need to make the reserve system good enough for both Jr and Sr. Our current system is just atrocious.

I care it is gone. I never bid reserve, because due to family I need to know when I will be home. Because of checkerboarding and other good reserve rules I did not have to do reserve when I took first available upgrade. Senior people bidding reserve massively increases QOL for junior people. And it was in the contract so spare me the "it was abuse" wailing. Next you will tell me I should plan 4 flights so I don't abuse the commute policy, or to extend on a red eye to not abuse the 12.5 actual on duty. IT IS/WAS A NEGOTIATED BENEFIT. And I think we gave it away without getting enough back. We have DTZ and R/G. Are you suggesting we only drop when the grid is really doubleplus green to make sure NK doesn't have to XY? I think we should do the opposite, so when arbitration starts, we can show how much it costs the company, and we get compensation if it is taken away from us.

and i was rarely able to drop as a lineholder because of checkerboarding. And yeah im also pro pbs. I never once saw a benefit from conflict. It also clogged up the red green at the front of every month. Red green is much better post-2018 from my perspective.

11 from bottom in ORD
Stuck on R3 Reserve. Sucks balls. Used all the time, and getting stuck with all these new hires for Red Eyes. QOL is in the sh|tter!!!!

ORD pilots do red eyes? That’s news.

LAX & LAS back to base.

The reality is that the biggest thing facing both pilot groups are behavioral items. Pay raises and profit sharing is a black and white in the sense that it doesn’t depend on how a pilot behaves, they’ll get the pay and the profit sharing.

Behavioral items like our reserve rules is what allows our line holders to drop trips without a threshold credit restriction or tell the company to kick sand when they up us to depart prior to 3 hours while on SCR.

Learning not only the work rules, but also how life would look like under certain work rules, and if that’s conducive to how we want to go about things in the future.

I was told that folks on reserve in JB don’t know their RAP until the day prior. If that’s true, thats’s a no-go for guys that bid reserve on purpose here.

I’m interested to see how we approach this as two groups trying to be one.

This would be convenient, but it would take away from premium.

Ex.: You’re R07 and commute. You see a trip in OT that would hav you report by 8:30. Let’s also say that if you pick up that trip, you’ll have 2 flights to get you in to be protected by the commuter policy. In this case you, you’d win.

But if the current system stayed as is, a pilot could’ve gotten it on the XY List and you continue to sit reserve.

Which one is better? Not entirely sure, but I do know that these types of items are behavioral items and that’ll need to be addressed in the JCBA. We’ll have to decide as a collective group how we want life to look like at post merger JB while on reserve.

yeah but what you’re forgetting in most cases there’s more than enough reserves to cover the trip the main difference being the one who wouldn’t be legal for it may prefer that trip where as the one who would get the call may not care or even would prefer not to fly at all.

when we aren’t in irops there’s maybe 1 or 2 premium calls a day in any particular base for the right seat. The left does have more. It might reduce premium by a small percent. But if all you’re doing is taking one reserve and moving him to a different rap you have one less reservist for the rap they were assigned. Another trip could pop up during that rap with one less person to cover it causing it to go premium. Premium are very much right time right place situations. They sporadically pop up and only in an irops can you see that list grow rapidly.

trips left in OT rarely go premium. It’s usually assigned to a reserve anyways. It’s day of trips where someone called out or operational issues that cause a lack of crew where those go premium.

Oh dear God don't suggest that premium be taken away with facts /s

Seriously though, while I love a 200% call as much as the next guy in my opinion there are better ways to consistently make more money for well pretty much the entire work group. At brand X we automatically got 125% (making up numbers because I can't remember...) for any hours above 72, 150% for any hours above 80 and 200% for any hours above 90 or whatever... so essentially we'd make 80 hours of pay just for flying the awarded line, and anything picked up in open time would essentially be automatically 150% or up to 200%. I think Frontier has some kind of system like this. You wouldn't necessarily have to give up X/Y or DTZ for this either and allowing aggressive pick up inside of 48 hours is a small concession to make to improve the quality of life for reserves. I digress however as I try to think of the good of the whole group and not just myself...

So you'd rather only have 12 days off on SCR, got it.

A couple of trips out of ORD do Caribbean and Central America red eyes. The first day is a late start and the following two days are red eye trips with one last late night back to ORD. Three "nights" in the same hotel in FLL. Worst trip ever.

There’s been plenty of times where I was the only reserve to cover said trip when they call me for non-contractual offer of MUP because there’s no one else. That trip should’ve gone to aXY List Pilot. That’s where I was getting at with said example.

Now, I don’t care which way we go because I’ve gotten premium from once or twice from that and I also wished I could’ve picked up a trip in the fashion that you’re describing. I get both sides tbh. Again, totally up to the pilot group as a whole

i agree with banana as a whole I’d rather see more consistent ways to make and guarantee higher pay. Hate playing the sporadic random game of waiting for premium. I’m only in the 30s for premium time and I’m in probably the top 10% of those who signed up. Definitely towards the bottom of the list for getting a call. Some really milk that systems and it’s good for them. But having something that can be used by the whole group where we don’t have to wait for random premium calls or get lucky there’s irops with only a few reserves and all the people above you on the list are busy.

But back to reserve I just think pick up within 48 would have a minimal if any effect on premium. Might have a few less one day and a few more the next. Just by the nature of how our premium works.

Considering both sides and being on reserve myself, I agree with y’all actually. As long as we’re legal for it and it fits in our RAP, we should be good to go. Idk how many times I put in a preference that fit my days perfectly only for CS to give it to someone else. Either that or it gets thrown into the X List because they decided they needed to hold onto more reserves for the next day.