Does Frontier shutting down their base in Chicago and then re-opening it a year or two later have any relevance to our current situation? I know things aren't good right now but am hoping they do not close any bases.

 

——deleted——

 

Deleted…….

 

was this just announced internally? Or just speculation?

 

Deleted…..

 

Frontier was growing when they shut down Chicago. Nobody except our boss knows why for sure but there was a thought that it was shut down a whim from a mad CEO who couldn’t control his ops during COVID. They moved most of the assets to ATL so it’s possible they needed to close Chicago to open ATL. There was also the rumor Chicago had allegedly underperformed for a while. But to bring it back within two years, to me, meant somebody made a mistake and that is as close to an apology as we will get out of the Biff. That is further backed by the fact that the Chicago ops have remained stable or grown since reopening.

 

You pretty much hit it on the head. I held weekends almost immediately on reserve (93% at the start), didn’t work a major holiday (Christmas and Thanksgiving included), and the flying is significantly better. Commuting is commuting, but VERY doable with our reserve rules.

For a long time, CAs I flew with at NK thought the above wasn’t possible unless you have 10+ years at the company. Being at a multi fleet airline has its perks and being on a junior fleet in a junior fleet is underrated to say the least

 

I understand how averages work. I happen to always operate or be on them. So much I’ve had to catch rides home on OAL more than I’d like.

we fly a lot of places a lot of people want to go and we fly a lot of places no one wants to go. We are industry standard for load % maybe slightly higher. We are well above industry standard for butts in seats moved per segment though. So 80% load factor on us is more passengers on a flight than a full legacy narrow body. Our 321 holds 55? More seats than a 737-900. When you look at DOT numbers we move ALOT of people for the amount of planes we don’t have.

ask people why they don’t fly spirit? Join group and read comments. It’s always the same “the customer service sucks” “the gate agents suck” “the flight attendants are rude” the public facing employees treat passengers so bad. And I get passengers are rude but so many times our employees (or contractors) instigate it into an issue it wasn’t.


do I have a fix? No. but I firmly believe the current path is not the correct path. Anyone with any business sense can see this glaringly obvious.

 

Year 1 pay at United is $120 for all FOs. Year 2 WB FO is $230. We even have year 2 CA that are making $345. Is this 80% less than Spirit? How much do you guys make exactly?

 

^^^THIS^^^

look, there’s no denying that any CA is going to take a pay hit going to a legacy. And that pay hit isn’t trivial. That’s easy enough to see from the pay scales:
https://d2r1lrrqctgamh.cloudfront.ne...-29.pdf#page35

But as for the QOL stuff, you really have to experience what being on a junior fleet does to your base and seat seniority does. It seems like an awful lot of those senior to you would just as soon become a WB FO and get paid for bunk flying to faraway places with strange sounding names. I was 50% in seat before getting off my probationary year as many of those in the intro classes ahead of me chose to jump to WB FO as soon as they could. For those willing to stay in the narrow body fleet, particularly at a junior base , seat seniority comes pretty quickly at the FO level and with 600 retirements a year, upgrades will too, although the changes in reserve rules and especially long call has eased up on the NBCA shortage to the point that nobody is being awarded (and on rare occasion junior manned in to) CA awards in intro. SoFlo is right about that. Now for anyone with only a few years left, jumping to a legacy as a CA certainly isn’t going to pencil out financially , and if you aren’t now commuting staying in your base may be a must, everyone’s situation is always a little and sometimes a lot different. But right now with long call even senior commuters - well above the g-line - are bidding reserve.

https://d2r1lrrqctgamh.cloudfront.ne...29.pdf#page281

Yeah, I’ve bought a few hotels here and there as a commuter - even after holding a line - and I’ve traded into a red eye or two to make sure I could be at special family events and holidays, and I’ll probably never have an opportunity at WB CA, but for me the transition has worked pretty damn well.