Sure did.

Filler

 

Congratulations on your "737th" post!

 

You mean how AMR used Eagle to gut AA scope?
This industry is littered with examples of pilot groups who didn't know or care enough to take scope and codeshare seriously. I hope we are well past this now. You'd be hard pressed to find a pilot who would give an inch on relaxing scope. The real question is how much stronger must the wording be?

 

Well considering we have unlimited code sharing available to them right now anything would be stronger

Today they could sell all scheduled aircraft deliveries to Frontier. Any markets they were planning on using those planes for they would let frontier fly and then spirit would sell X number of tickets on that flight as Spirit flight 123 operated by frontier airlines.

Say Spirit wants markets in Europe but can't fill a A330 or 787. So they conspire with Ryanair to get the jets and operate them with their cheaper pilots and sell X amount of seats as spirit flight 123 operated by Ryan air flight 123.

Rinse and repeat to any domestic or foreign carrier. As the ULCC model proliferates it only makes sense to codeshare if they can make more money by not using their own jets and their own pilots (us).

Result: we stagnate at 76ish A320 family jets and 1300 pilots and no body gets furloughed. All legal in our current section 1

No merger necessary.

 

"As the ULCC model proliferates it only makes sense to codeshare if they can make more money by not using their own jets and their own pilots (us)."

The answer is they can't. If it's such a money maker why aren't they doing it now? Because getting a few dollars per seat while F9 does the flying is not the way to run a profitable airline.

 

Both points are as valid as the other, however there's not a single reason why we shouldn't get it in there. Remember, "Spirit wasn't ever going to IPO" either.

And while scope always has the potential to "not be worth the paper it's written on", it absolutely slows them down a bit to think about whether it's worth the cost to break it.

 

It may not make sense now but some day it might. As the market gets more saturated on certain city pairs one day it may make more sense to code share than beat each other to death on that route or pull out of the market. Maybe domestic narrow body it may never but perhaps long haul international it does to feed the domestic fleet. Ask a JetBlue guy how many wide body's they would have if it weren't for code sharing. I can tell you factually they would have had A330s already.

Maybe you don't want to do that flying, that's fine, but if it's done by our pilots it only will improve your seniority on the narrow body. Just because spirit of today doesn't codeshare doesn't mean the spirit of 10 or 20 years from now will not. We will probably have three or four different CEOs in that time. 20 years from now in the sweet spot of my career is not the time when I want to see the pilot group whither on the vine when we could have been still growing organically. Also if they can send the flying elsewhere in the future it lowers your leverage in future negotiations. If they can codeshare out the flying and stagnate the list they have no incentive to give you more money because they will move the airplanes anyway. If you have that flying locked down they can't move them without you. Scope is everything!

 

That statement needed more emphasis! Damn straight...without solid scope, you've got nothing!

 

spoke with union rep today in FLL for a good 15 minutes. He is one of the insiders. I tried as hard as I could to pick his brain. This is according to him, but a deal is imminent. I was curious about pay and retirement the most as are most folks I suspect. He basically said the company has agreed to 1.5 billion in total compensation over the 5 years. The union was shooting for 1.6ish or so. The 1.5 billion is to be divided up how the union sees fit. He acknowledged that the majority of the money is looked to be spent on the guys at 4-8 year longevity. obviously mostly capt rates. although the didn't give specifics it sounds a lot like jet blue rates.. 165-190 range. We talked about top end. I told him i thought $230 would be reasonable and he said don't be surprised to see it slightly higher than that. He said the senior guys are quickly being out numbered by mid tier seniority levels so therefore paying 125 guys $230 an hour wasn't nearly as big a portion of the 1.5 billion pot as mid level guys so they didn't mind to pay them that. He made it sound like first year still sucks, around $49 but second is around $90 and tops out around $145.
Although he didn't tell me the breakdown between the two, but total retirement, direct contribution and company match on 401k would total 15%. maybe 10 DC and 5 match but who knows. he didn't say. He said an overwhelming majority surveys were more concerned with QOL issues, and thats what they spent most time working on. For the sake of expediency (because thats what surveys asked for) they worked on big ticket items. we DID not discuss stuff like min day, rigs, vacation and many of those items. reading between the lines much of that stuff wasnt discussed, and the new contract will be very similar to the old when it comes to all things other than compensation. I don't understand scope and merger protection so I didn't ask anything regarding that, because truthfully i don't know much about that stuff. He made light of the fact, we could argue for delta pay, and legacy pay and over a long period of time very likely get it. A mediator would buy into the argument that we are worth delta pay due to the success of the company but that a mediator would basically say there work rules and ours our so different that they would grant us delta pay if we took delta rules. Again, his opinion. So the million dollar question is, when this thing comes out, are guys gonna be willing to look at the entire package with Line bidding, 4 days off, good health insurance, good commuter clause and accept maybe 170 an hour when they think they are worth 182? we shall see. If its all about pay rates it will be OK but not great I suspect. but my opinion and mine only is that, as a whole its gonna be on a whole, a fair and reasonable TA. GOOD luck !

 

I think that's what the majority thinks and expects.