And why would anyone of either pilot group vot yes on a JCBA that takes us even further away from current market rates?

Are you under the dilusion that either MEC would present an industry leading, or even industy par, JCBA to the pilot group? And are you further under the dillusion that either group would vote down a subpar JCBA?

Average of F9+NK rates +5% and it passes by 65%+

Or am I supposed to still be laughing over your 'snap up' dreams? What color lanyard will that rally cry be?

I don't want to believe you, but unfortunately I do.

Lmao you aint wrong, you may be okay with less than industry standard but I sure the hell ain't. Your line of thinking is why we will forever be bottom of the barrel dragging the rest of the industy down.

Me pointing out what the MEC(s) will do and how the pilot groups will vote is not me acquising to either mentality. And it isn't my line of thinking; it's the cold hard truth of working for either of these two scumbag airlines. Have you looked around at your company, aircraft, and crew? It is what it is and it certainly pays the bills for a lot of us but it will never be what you see when you look over the ramp at your near peers.

Current legacy A320 12 year rates are topping at nearly $400/hour while NK is $320 and F9 is $270. If you ever think that these two boat anchors of the industry when combined will have parity with any legacy, or even Southwest, then you really need to either step back and assess the industry or reach out to a mental health professional. Either carrier works for a lot of folks but if it doesn't then there is a lot of hiring coming up in the next few years. Ask the guy sitting beside you next time; odds are they've already interviewed somewhere else. Stay or go; it's a decision that we all have to make. But make an honest assessment of what Firit will be and not banging the dillusional drum of snap up or pairty rates.

May be anecdotal but I'm at F9 and whenever I commute on NK your airplanes are consistently cleaner than ours, app works way better than F9, wifi on board and overall much more quality in the branding than us.

MCO is one of our largest bases (was the largest for a while till they gutted it by opening several bases at once) and we don't even have a service desk past security. Everyone gets sent back to the ticket counter or is told to text our customer service on whatsapp since we don't even have a phone number anymore... seriously... so it's all a joke. NK has a service desk with 3 employees tending to customers at MCO by their gates. Whatever you're used to get ready for it to be taken a few notches down, unfortunately.

Thank you for proving my point.

Well that's interesting, I saw a commutable 4 day in open time at my base for days on end. I've been here a while and the day trips are working well with me and actually most guys I fly with like them unless they are commuting (which I understand). If I was a commuter I definitely would have left, but with having a family they are working great.

Based on careful observation of how the DOJ review phase of that merger played out I believe the DOJ fully intended to tank the AS/HA merger, they just needed to go through some bureaucratic motions to make it look like a reasoned decision.

As part of that process they agreed to a specific timeline... both parties had some obligations but DOJ agreed to either oppose it after a 90 day or review or let it go. They fully intended to oppose.

Then there was this debate thing, and the election became ugly with the incumbents looking to lose over economic issues.

I think the administration told DOJ to not oppose, to avoid economy-unfriendly optics in the runup to the election. The passive aggressive manner in which they let the clock run out on the review period kind of supports that suspicion.

I don't know if DOJ would have succeeded in court, but I'm convinced they damn well intended to try, until they got waved off by the big guy.

I can guarantee you that the ****s Merrick Garland and Jonathan Kanter, especially the latter, wanted to tank it. They are zealots that need to be unemployed.

Don't forget Lina Kahn, flip side of the same coin.

It's looking they'll all be unemployed on Jan 21st.

Ah. So you want to freeload off of others’ hard work without actually raising the bar yourself. A true unionist.

eh, he’s right. Snap up has become the standard.

Whaaaaat!?!?
Tbh I would prefer to negotiate for 3 years and then be another cycle behind the industry 🤦
Yeah, I would prefer to have the snap up, and no it's not "freeloading"

Hahah management fears those orange lanyards so scary

No, snap up is not freeloading. It's a safety valve, why would you not want it? It's now become the standard.

Does the rest of the industry expect two merged airlines, one broke, both in an essentially failing business niche to set the new bar at DAL+30%? While already coming from behind? No. But at the very least a snap up, even if it's on a time delay, is better than nothing.

Personally I don't view F9/NK as leading the next round of pattern bargaining, but playing catch up from the last one. YMMV depending on who you talk to.

AA, UAL, DAL, B6, WN, AS all have snap up no?

F9 had minimum average of peers language prior to indigo. The problem with it was peers were listed as alaska America west and AirTran I believe. It became tough to argue the average of one number.

Maybe the heavy lift would be defining the peer group to include legacies. Or at least SWA.

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justi...-inquiry-state

Looks to me like they’re not done yet.

These ****ing jokers.

1. The industry is the healthiest it’s been in history due to past consolidation.

2. Tickets are the cheapest they’ve ever been on an inflationary scale.

3. Route networks larger than ever allowing more ease in rerouting passengers due to bad weather and other circumstances.

4. Large gains have been made in labor contracts to compensate employees better than they have been since pre 9/11

5. billions in value have been returned to shareholders

6. Blocking further consolidation through the Spirit/jetblue merger put 163 highly skilled union pilots out of work and is threatening to put thousands of Americans at Spirit out of work, along with hundreds of millions of dollars in lost shareholder value.

7. Airfare will go up when spirit goes under when the spirit/JetBlue merger would have kept legacy prices in check.

I cannot believe these ****ers are even citing this as a positive for the industry.

pretty sure the govt will not attempt to block an F9/Nk merger. This will be them just saying they have done their due diligence blah blah blah.

We know our "peers" are the ones flying the same planes as us. It used to be said that the number of seats dont matter, its the plane category that determine pay.

Well now we have legacies paying wide body rates to 321neos because they hold the most seats. Our 321neos hold 240 pax and we should be compensated us such, be it pay or a mixture of pay + benefits/QOL.

Our management at F9 has tried to tell us our peers are those of Allegiant, spirit, breeze, and jetblue when in reality, those are just the airlines with the lowest industry contracts, aka, the cheapest.

are you going to trigger other groups’ snap-ups, and raise the bar for them? Of course not. You’re going to piggyback on other pilots’ successes and tack one on for yourself.

Stone is just a troll. Don't feed the troll.

well, it’s actually 229 pax now for an A321NEO but I get your point 🤓

He also can't tell you one thing he personally did to 'raise the bar'. He just sat on a seniority list while his union volunteers were out there actually doing the work. He's like the fan of a football team that uses the word 'we'. "We played a great game!"

No, *you* didn't do s---t.

The F9 321NEOs do indeed have 240 seats. He works at F9.

Having flown a number of them during my time at F9, I can corroborate this fact. Their 321neo variant holds 240 pax + crew. It’s a full boat!

I promise you no rep with at least 2 brain cells (we have one that is questionable in that department) said that.

How is that different than Frontier?

Slightly off the current direction of the thread, but meaningful to the original topic:

Does anyone else even suspect that there was some master plan right at the begining of this?

Frontier try to buy Spirit for $24/share. Jet blue fear the end result or a large low cost carrier on the east coast so they come along with a sweetheart deal at $33 of which an amount will be prepaid to shareholders. Oh and if its blocked they will pay $400m compensation (but the prepay amount shall satisfy the $400m). They then put together the lamest defense during the court case. They really dont want spirit, they just want to scupper the frontier/spirit deal. Oh, and Ted, who told the shareholders to accept the frontier offer and not the JB offer (probably got some A1 gig set up at frontier), said the wrong things to the judge to seal the deal for a block with JB.

Meanwhile, NK shares tank to 5-10% of the value during merger talks. Frontier then steps back up and will probably offer some really low ball offer like $3/share.

I know, some of these numbers are rounded and I may be a little off. I may be way off on my rounding and have glazed over all the facts. Just spitballing what it feels like as a small shareholder. It would make a good daytime movie.

Good grief, we had like 180 in ours.

Share price is not the issue. Its the massive debt that Frontier would have to take ownership of. Can Frontier afford to drop $1.2B this next september to make the balloon payment plus the ongoing 8% interest payments on the other $2B? That's $160M a year in added debt. Can Frontier magically add $160M in profits with Spirits assets? Because the turn-around on that now is substantial with the current business model not working.

Indigo could by Spirit and take it private while renegotiating its debt all while running it as a separate airline. After everything is settled with the debt they could then sell it to Frontier at manageable price. The goal is to acquire Spirit without someone else coming in and screwing it all up again.

Why would the bondholders even want to renegotiate? If Spirit doesn't pay them they can sell the assets and recoup their investment. The only reason to refinance would be at a higher interest rate and then Frontier or Indigo would get stuck with that even greater debt load. Its not like the bondholders will be wiped out. They are the most senior note holders and will get paid off before anyone else and will be paid in full. Its the subordinate debt holders that might want to renegotiate, but the amount isn't enough to make a difference financially.

Because a fully in tact, operational airline is worth more than whatever equity they could squeeze out of the assets at this point. Because they stand to lose in Chapter 11 depending on how that shakes out. Because maybe an equity swap with the thought of a sale or acquisition has a bigger financial upside. Lots of reasons.

Curious but what good are assets that are unable to generate revenue? Many of the assets that would have to be sold, are basically worthless until re engined. Sort of a unique scenario really. I have no idea how many aircraft are actually in this state. But it’s definitely more than 23.

The airplanes needing engine work are not owned, they are leased. I think what a lot of people are not taking into consideration is the fact that leased items cannot be included in part of the the calculations used to determine value in determining chapter 7 or 11. For example, the creditors can’t say “they are worth more in chapter 7 because we can sell all these airplanes and get our money back” they can only used owned assets. Which is why I imagine spirit has been leaving back so many airplanes. Those now cannot be used to determine spirits value in liquidation.

secondly - did everyone miss the fact that Hawaiian worked a deal to get all their junked engines traded out for good ones? Their downtime was very very minimal. My hunch is that those planes that Spirit has sitting do in fact have value and could quite possibly be back in the air quite quickly if they belonged to an owner that WANTED them in the air. I think spirit wants them sitting for now; which is why they aren’t pressing for a deal like Hawaiian did.

the 23 sold were perfectly good flying airplanes. They were an “older and less fuel efficient fleet”.

and, sorry I quoted you, this may or may not respond to what you’re saying. But yours was the easiest to click respond to and you were responding to the poster that I think I’m probably responding too as well. And it’s late and I’m tired haha!

Yep. Lots of Delta pilots match this description, unfortunately.