I know who you’re angry with and it’s not the majority of NK guys. Bucking up is only going to make this worse. Yes. I’ve been through merger and SLI. In which there was some beef between the groups at the time. I’m willing to bet it’s inevitable. Should any merge become reality, resistance will be your biggest enemy.

he still mad

That’s where you’re wrong. This absolutely affects F9 pilots. In a variety of ways.

offering more money for a broke company not finished with BK? Yeah because that doesn’t effect F9 pilots at all.
In the meantime F9 is still in the middle of contract negotiations with no signs of moving forward. But hey throw all this money at an NK merger instead. That’ll make it all better for F9. A process by the way that will take years to finalize.

Consolidate or die. That’s what you’re going o say next right? If you repeat it enough times it must be true. Because you can see 20 years into the future and tell us what this industry looks like. Most people on this forum can even remember 20 years behind them.

you should be more mad at how F’d up your company is.

He got even more mad. Quick bang on your keyboard in anger for papi.

These offers have already fallen through like 3 times. Hopefully it’ll keep on happening.

Why? We are here by choice, mostly. Everyone has the option to leave. Maybe it’s something to consider for you, because life is too short to spend it being angry.

Im sorry - where did I say anywhere in that, that it doesn’t affect F9 pilots. Please show me - I’ll wait.

you keep saying I’m mad. The only thing I’m mad about is F9 offering NK a single cent more until they’re out of BK. It should really be also until negotiations are done. But, that’ll never happen.

ok fair enough. Looks like you’re right. But the point still stands. This disproportionately affects F9. So why should someone be quiet about it.

also, plenty of your guys have come over to F9 forum dropping little nuggets of wisdom about how the model is dead, F9 is next, get out now, ULCC is done. Sorry I can’t post my opinion on the NK forum. Didn’t realize there was a no trespass sign here.

plenty of NK pilots on this forum have said all sorts of thing regarding not wanting to work for Frankie and indigo, or Barry, they were tired of the ULCC model, NK would be better off going alone in BK and trying to emerge as something better.

As far as I’m concerned this is as good of an opportunity as any. Have at it.

it’s apparent with every post. We are all pilots. We don’t make the decisions that you are in here screaming at us about. We are just numbers, as are you. Write a letter to your management to share your feelings.

well thank god you cleared that up. I guess airline Pilot central can just close down now. Who would’ve known this whole time we just need to write management instead of posting on a message board. A message board with the intended purpose of posting one’s opinion

thanks 69.

I definitely don’t argue your point. And I see some of your concerns. Obviously the ultra low cost carrier model as we know it is dead, but frontier has ship it as has Spirit . I think Spirit did so too late, but we can’t necessarily fault to other people for saying that the ultra low cost carrier model is dead. All I know is, most of the frontier people that I’ve talked to have been very pleasant, and very open to what’s taking place. Most the Spirit guys that I talk to feel the same way as far as your contract negotiations are concerned, You do realize that a merger would force frontier’s hand to negotiate a new contract. So that wouldn’t be a bad thing either. Look, Everybody is entitled to their own opinion, but there is a way to express that opinion that doesn’t come across as angry or hostile. That’s all I’m trying to say.

from the union “your MEC was not informed of any of these discussions prior to today’s public announcement.”

how much longer is the union going to walk around with their pants down letting the company keep information secret from them? Seems we get these emails every week saying “ company didn’t inform us, we will fight this!”

laugh

fair enough. We will leave on a good note.

Again I harbor no ill will at NK or it’s pilots.

sounds like a deal to me. In the end, we all fall victim to whatever our management and our investors think is best. Unfortunately, we are at their mercy. But as pilots, we’re all in it for the same reasons. Do what we love, make good money at it, and have a good quality of life. Hopefully everybody is able to continue to do that. Thanks for the good conversation.

Thats not what happened. WN made a bid contingent on the pilot groups agreeing to an SLI as part of their offer. The Judge rejected any contingencies attached to any offer. The only other offer on the table was Repubic who already had a fee for departure contract with F9. and they used what was owed as partial payment for the entire company along with $109 million.

Well, judging by your angry response, it needed cleared up. I wish I could say that I looked forward to flying with you in the future, but you’ll be off on your Delta career by then. Best of luck.

Frontier asks Spirit to dance again...

Spirit: "I have a boyfriend. In Canada."

**he goes to another school

Got news for you dude, when your airline’s little sale-leaseback ponzi scheme ends, you’ll be hemorrhaging cash too. Your product isn’t any better than NK’s. Both airlines are screwed, you’d be better off together.

Losing the possibility of a quick upgrade has freaked all out at one time or another, cut him some slack. The numbers don’t lie, consolidation has to happen. People need to stop only looking forward and take a good hard look from where we have all come to realize the LCC/ULCC model is trash. Big seats aren’t going to save us, the industry has to consolidate. There are plenty of YouTube programs out there explaining it, many with the likes of people like David Neeleman explaining it and you can’t argue with that guys success.

I need to bow out before I get more infractions, the almighty has spoken.

🥂

Someone doesn't know what an NDA is...

Just out of curiosity how many pilots does Spirit have right now? On flica for us at Frontier its 2200. I know at one point you guys had like 3500?

Just as important would be how many per airplane? Well active airplanes anyway? IF they decide to work out a deal how long until they change to our 14 pilots per airplane count? That could really hurt a lot of people at Spirit again.

Then there’s the 800 cadets in the Frontier pipeline making $1000 per month. If there’s a huge excess of pilots after coming together what happens to them?

This could be messier for a great deal of pilots than it would initially seem.

We’re down to approximately 2800

3,369 on the most recent seniority list posted early in January including furloughs. Of course...the attrition rate is high, so that number is decreasing by the day. Historically, we have maintained a fairly high pilot-to-A/C ratio of around 8-8.5 crews per A/C.

Ya that is high compared to us. Our attrition moved relatively higher this month to a rate not seen since April of last year. Pretty much double what it was each month for the last six months. No surprise really.

heres something I wrote up last year before we filed the BK. I changed some things now that we know some of the numbers more, updated it if you will. Of course it means absolutely nothing. Just numbers I counted and worked up on a long layover with nothing else to do. Take it for what it’s worth -

“”According to the FFTpilot page (numbers may not be entirely accurate but it’s what I have so they are what I’ll use) frontier has 157 airplanes and around 2215 pilots on property. End of 2025, frontier will have 178 planes.



Spirit has about 192 airplanes after selling the 23 CEOS that we sold last year. Spirit takes delivery of an additional 5 airplanes in 2025, so end of 2025 spirit has 197 airplanes. We have not seen a post furlough list of active pilots on property, but I’m going to guess high at around 3000 (I’m guessing more like 2900 or less but 3000 to be conservative)



Spirit runs about 16 pilots per plane, not sure how many frontier runs but with current math I’d say maybe 14 or so per plane.



Using the numbers I guess for spirits new seniority list, spirit / frontier combined has an active pilot list of about 5215 pilots.



at the end of 2025, spirit / frontier combined will have a fleet of about 375 airplanes.



375 airplanes at fifteen pilots per plane (average of F9 at 14 per plane and NK at 16 per plane is 5625 pilots. With a combined pilot list of 5215 pilots, looks like we’ll need more. Even if you calculate at 14 per plane, that’s 5250 pilots required to operate those airplanes. So when we are fully operational with all planes, we’re good.



Now, i know those numbers don’t take into consideration the grounded spirit airplanes. But it also doesn’t take into consideration any additional attrition. The airplane number that spirit is grounding is a very fluid number and hard to determine what it wlll be from day to day, but the number of grounded planes at any given time continues to reduce as time goes on.



if you take the worse case scenario numbers - frontiers 178 airplanes and if the number we were last given for spirit airframes are correct, an average of 40 ish down at one time. That’s 157 planes spirit until we get all the planes working again. that’s 335 airplanes combined spirit frontier at 14 pilots per plane is 4690 pilots. But like I say, the groundings are very fluid and is hard to predict. And could be on the downhill side of the slope before the companies are combined.



I know we have a LOT of more senior folks that will be leaving now that legacy hiring is ramping back up. It will certainly be interesting to see how things play out.





just the two cents from someone who has nothing better to do than to look at numbers and play with their iPhone calculator.””

how many airplanes does spirit have on order? Would like to know what the potential growth is for the next 10 years. I know both companies have extended some of their deliveries out into next decade. I think F9 put 50 into next decade.

Spirit has 55-60 in order. I’m tied up and can’t look up the exact number but that’s a ball park

Those numbers all make sense.

Frontier order book goes until about mid 2031. Spirits order book starts growing again in about 2030. It’s a nice match up there.

F9 current fleet size plans
End of 2025-178
2026-191
2027-209
2028-227
2029-250
2030/31-284

All subject to change of course.

so combined fleet 20230 would be in the neighborhood of 500-550 planes. 7500-8000 pilots group. Not bad not bad.

hopefully they would be able to find markets for that amount of ulcc product in the us. They will definitely need to tweet the product beyond blocked middle seats.

If a merger does happen, there is no guarantee that the combined entity will equal the sum of the two parts. Assets could be shed to meet reduced demand, or growth could occur to meet increased demand. I'd agree about having to significantly improve the product to successfully compete against the legacies. A bigger version of what is currently being offered won't work. There is a demand for a low cost product, just as there is a demand for legacy offerings, but no one knows how that balance will work out.

I tend to agree. Any Spirit aircraft that wasn’t SLB I would expect to be sold or leased back for an immediate cash benefit. They could accelerate retirement plans on IAE engine equipped aircraft too? I’m not sure of the makeup of the Spirit fleet in that regard. Our CEO engine group will be gone by 2029 as things stand now.

that’s the thing-the legacies have pretty much met the demand for a low cost product with their basic, no frills fares.

Sounds like what NK guys were saiying in 2019 with the current order book..."Oh so in 2027 we will have over 300 planes and close to 5000 pilots."

Life happens when making plans.

Step 1 is to try to merge two airlines that seem to have soured on the traveling public.
Step 2 is to try to make that new airline profitable and sustainable

Anything else is a hope at this point because thinking 550 planes will be waranted for this product in 2030, when there isnt currently, is a stretch.

The reason there is no growth till 30 is because they cancelled orders and are selling planes. The reason there is growth after 30 is because they aren't looking that far ahead. Reread your last sentence a couple of more times every day.

Mmm yes the situation is fluid. As it stands now there are still 56 aircraft on order for Spirit. They were deferred, not cancelled.

Reading through the Sept 30 filing my timing was a bit off. Looks like there are still supposed to be 36 coming in 2027-2028. Time will tell.

https://news.bloomberglaw.com/bankru...gain-to-feb-20

More time to work out a merger agreement?