Sweet, Im looking forward to flying a brand new plane :)

The shine will quickly wear off when you have to fly it at night with those new type strobes on the sharklet airplanes. Annoying to say the least.

Lol, they LEDs?

I have no problem showing up on time, doing my revisions and stating "Revisions" in my ACARS delay message. Why?

Because it's considered safe to fly the remainder of a three or four day pairing with expired charts.

Because it's considered safe to fly the jet with an expired data base. I was given a jet in FLL around 11am with a data base that had expired at 0900Z. Maintenance dmi'd the data base so I could do a turn and the CP concurred.

Yet it is considered unsafe to get my revisions, update the ones that effect my flight and do the rest later. No instead I can't check in for my LGA turn until I post the latest 10-9 page for Bogota. That doesn't pass the laugh test.

Sometimes the only way to change a bad policy is to rigorously enforce it. I will show up on time and post my revisions and then check in. You do what you will.

No kidding. Flew 619 the other night, spent the entire flight with the sun shades up. I imagine a can of black spay paint on the inboard side of the lens would fix the issue.

Congrats! Did you have any internal recs by chance?

Yes, but that is not the issue, all of the newer ones have LED's, the issue on the sharklet aircraft is the strobe wraps around to the inside of the wing, so you get a continuous white flashing on your glare shield right at eye level. Really enjoyable. Why they did that I don't know.

Thanks! Nope, I don't have any internal recs. I spoke with the gentleman at the job fair for what felt like only about 90 seconds, but one thing that seemed to grab his attention was that I live in a Spirit base, and he asked me how far from the airport I live and I told him 35 mins. Not sure if this was small talk or if perhaps they are looking for locals?

I heard that as well, I'm sure it helps to live close to ORD being its a new base

They asked me how close to ohare i lived also. I live very close

"Vacancy Bid 13-05 Final Award" RECALLED

HA HA, didn't take long!, I wonder why?

Yeah, I read that as the base admin wanted to recall the email to everyone about posting the results in LAS, but what do I know...

Not the award, the email from the LAS supervisor. The awards are good.

This award mentions more upgrades coming. I thought they were going to slow that down for the summer. :confused: Not that I am complaining.

I know for a fact that several leasing companies approached Spirit to lease used A319s and A320s. We turned them all away last year (except for those A319s we got). With our new sims and our training department catching up, I wouldn't be surprised if we got more airframes coming up on top of our new deliveries.

Thanks dude! At least someone knows what's going on!!

Has anyone else find the strobes on 619 a pain at night?

Yeah! Very annoying, and also your night vision gets ruined by them whenever you look out your side window.

Must be the same blind engineer behind it who designed the new radio volume knobs.

Not me.. I wear my sunglasses at night...

Got it! The shades did a good job, I'll add the sunglasses next time. Thx.

Besides reporting that carryon bags are up to $50 at the airport (they are actually as much as $100) and that a ticket on us nonstop from OAK-PDX on us is much cheaper than Delta's nonstop (neither us nor Delta fly nonstop from OAK to PDX), a very nicely written and spot on article.

But most of the comments by people, as most comments are, were pretty ignorant.
Plus, I flew DFW-ATL-FLL, my seats reclined, the FAs were really nice (and attractive) and the headrest was cool.

Sorry, but this is a bullsheet fee:

Unintended Consequences of DOT Regulations Fee, $2.00 per customer each way

Then spend the extra couple C -notes and fly Delta. It is what it is. Save the $, or don't. It's your choice. Just go troll your own airline board, or S.T.F.U.

THIS HAS BEEN A PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT.

And what exactly can the NK pilots do about it? So why bring it up? What are you? 25? When will you grow up and realize that most of us are happy to even have a job? The industry is full of pilots that are kicked around and beaten to death, and you have the nerve to start this "my airline is better than yours" bs. Like you have anything to do with that.

Or should I start to give you c... too about stuff you have no control over? Like:

Why are you working for a largely foreign owned carrier?
Especially one that is owned by an extremely anti labor person like Sir yellow teeth Benson?
But if you have than why are you not unionized still?
Why are you doing the same job we are with 20% less pilots?
... and on and on

Seriously dude what is it with you? You keep coming here making yourself look like an idiot over and over.

Haha! I flew with home quite a few times at pinnacle, pretty sure he's right around 28. The funny thing is that he's not vocal at all in person!!! Quiet as can be.

I understand fees and extras for baggge, food, boarding passes, equipment, etc.

But wth is an unintended consequences fee? It's a BS fee and you know it. So the entire fare has to be published including tax, so there's somehow a consequence fee to see that entire published fare? Like I said, BS.

It's easy to be vocal when hiding behind an anonymous screen name...

Perhaps that one is. Never heard of it before that article. But I am curious as to why selling snacks on board is considered a "fee"? Is it a fee after you buy gas at 7-11 to go in and buy a bottle of water and a bag of m&ms? Article kinda misleads in that regard.

That's not what that fee is about. It is about the law that says a person can cancel a reservation within 24 hours and receive a full refund. Which means we can't sell the seat while that person is holding on to it, and if they cancel, we may have lost the opportunity to sell it to someone else in the interim. If a seat goes empty, everyone's costs go up. Other businesses use similar tactics, but nobody seems to get as irate as when an airline does it.

Why is it a critique on a Spirit fee is viewed as an insult to a Spirit pilot? You may find this hard to believe, but not everything revolves around a pilots head. It's a critique on a business model, more so on a fee.

'Doing the same job for 20% less'...... are you serious? Says the Spirit pilot? :rolleyes:

The REAL answer is that it is a good way to avoid taxes. Government taxes are on base fares for air tickets. The airlines have done a good job of charging fees for 'extras' that were otherwise free before. For example, 15 years ago a ticket price included bags. But today, taxes are still very high, and airline tickets are taxed worse than cigarettes. One way to fight it, is to do what one can to remove items from the base ticket and sell it as an extra. Bags, food, etc.

Remember, the base fare is what is taxed like crazy. Bag fees, food fees, the airlines get to coin that without the crazy taxes that they have to pay on the base fare.

THAT is the reason Spirit is doing what it is doing. Base fare prices are very low, and that is what is taxed. It's a smart business move. Other airlines do it too, but not the same extent. It's still a smart move. The next question is, how long before the government decides to go after the extra fees for revenue (tax them like base fares). That's something I could see Obama doing, especially if the aviation user fees fails. Will the ATA (or A4A?) lobby be strong enough to beat the socialistic Obama CHOO CHOO going down the tracks? That remains to be seen.

That's me! Hopefully I didn't scare ya too much! :D

It's all there before you hit the purchase button. Your choice whether to pay the fee or not. If that little fee is what allowed NK to make $32M last quarter with less than 50 aircraft while you guys with you're bundled service continue to hemorrhage cash, so be it. Right now I'm as comfortable as you can get in this industry that my paycheck isn't going to bounce.

Ahh, see I learned something. I thought this was the fee for publishing a fare in full including taxes. Now here is a guy who has good knowledge of what this fee was really about, and now I see what you say makes sense. Thank you for that.

See what happens when someone makes a rational argument? That wasn't too hard, and someone walks away having learned something new.

That wasn't what he said. He said:

Spirit has 50 airplanes and 789 pilots (our internal #'s). That's 15.78 pilots per aircraft.

Virgin America has 53 airplanes and 578 pilots (according to APC). That's 10.9 pilots per aircraft.

VA has 44% more pilots per aircraft than Spirit, and thus needs 200 less pilots than Spirit to staff a 6% larger fleet. The #'s don't lie.

Since you brought it up, though, Spirit also has a more senior pilot group, with pilots at the top end of the wage scale, 15+ years. Virgin America doesn't have any pilots near the top of their wage scale. So, yeah, VA pilots probably average 20% less than Spirit pilots to do the same job, and that's without accounting for our higher pilot/aircraft ratio (those extra 200 pilots cost $). Believe me, Spirit management would love to change that, and will bring this up during our upcoming negotiations, so we're all for VA's pilots costing their company more, and so is our management.;)

I'm not here to put down VA - its a great product, and I ride VA over Spirit whenever I can as a jumpseater.

I don't see why this has to be viewed as adversarial, Spirit vs. Virgin America, which is better? Virgin America is a high risk company right now, relative to others (lower market presence, questionable profitability, etc.) - but with risk comes reward. Spirit is a higher risk company than the legacy carriers too (our business model is profitable, but will passengers choose to pay more for better amenities, long term, and can we continue to grow now that the 'low hanging fruit' has been picked?). Less risk than VA, less potential for reward. Junior Captain here is Jan 2008 currently, 2 years longer than VA, but still much faster than Southwest, UA, DL, AA, or Fed Ex/UPS.

Since this is a Spirit thread, I'll bring it back to a Spirit issue: Good to see 620 only took 2 days to get on-line after arrival here in the US. We need more airplanes to cover the current schedule, IMO.

Nedskid, I made one comment about a fee which didn't make sense (unintended consequence of DOT fee). Somehow, others turned it into a VX vs NK battle. I don't care who works for which airline, my comment was about a certain fee. One guy answered that the fee was in regards to holding a ticket for 24 hrs and being able to cancel it. That I now understand. You are right, this isn't supposed to be adversarial. Why make it so?