Read the language. "In Lieu of the above". The language was extremely poorly written, and gives the company the ability to go down to 4 days off, in lieu of 5 consecutive days.

 

Sure, I get that. However, it does clearly state 5 days. Now as for the interpretation, that's a different story.
So the language is basically states days off should be a minimum of 5; however, it can be no less than 4.

 

Yes, exactly.

 

The full 39 page arbitration ruling is here ; but this might help:

"While the Company's desire to reduce its financial costs in this difficult economic climate is entirely understandable, its position that it could simply reduce the blocks of days off at its discretion is entirely unsupported by the evidence presented at the hearing. All of the evidence of the parties' intent when agreeing to the “maximum extent possible” phrase was that it should be extremely narrowly interpreted. Economic or financial considerations are not valid motivations for unilaterally reducing the blocks of days off for pilots. The bargaining history between the parties undoubtedly suggests that marketing/operational considerations resulting in line construction problems are the only basis for reducing the minimum number of consecutive days off below 4. To interpret the provisions in any other way would effectively allow the exception to swallow the rule. For that reason, the Board concludes that the grievance is sustained."

 

I personally believe our low averaging trips are the result of the rapid expansion. We serve many places but often fly a route once a day. You can only get so creative with a single frequency or even with two flights a day. Then you feed all this to the optimizer to cut down on soft time and we got the results we have now.

Pair those 18h 4 days with the 4 days off (like CaScott pointed it out), next keep the long trips off of the beginning and the end of the month to minimize transition conflicts, and you get a 72h line.

I think it will be interesting to see what this next 1-2 years will bring us. If they will increase frequencies we may see improvements. A lot of this is not in the interest of the company either and that may be the only good news. Other than that, this is it folks. We can't even bargain for KCM with the company (and I am not even trying to blame either side, just pointing it out) so we certainly won't be able to sit down and improve trip construction.

 

We shouldn't be bargaining for KCM; it benefits the company along with the pilot group.

 

Got the email for the long app on Friday and was #191 at the Chicago job fair. Bachelors degree, RJ F/O, 5500TT, 0 TPIC, 3700 TSIC part 121. Fingers crossed! (especially for an ORD base)

 

That's just it. The company makes ZERO out of it, only the pilots get a benefit out of it. NK will not do it.

 

Congrats, that's the next step! Good luck!

I thought it improved the efficiency of pilots getting to the plane? I would think Spirit would want to increase efficiency.

Disclaimer: I know nothing of KCM other than its supposed to speed up the process through security, but if its only a benefit to pilots then I can see management not paying for it.

 

There is no increase efficiency for the company that I can see. As pilots we like to tote that it is a mutual benefit but its not true. We have a show time of 45 min prior to departure, if that was lowered to 30 minutes because we got KCM maybe it could be a benefit to the company but I still don't see how they make more money shaving 15 min off a show time rather than paying for KCM.

As it was said earlier comparing us to Virgin, this company chose to be profitable over passenger comfort and customer service. It also chose to be profitable over employee satisfaction.