Left Handed

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.

ShyGuy

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?

ShyGuy

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.

ShyGuy

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

Plane Ramrod

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.

ShyGuy

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.

NedsKid

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.

ShyGuy

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?

Normann

Yes I was. I was right too as Nedskid pointed it out. He did not even include the soft money into the equation which we have quite some.

Here is a serious question for you: Are you guys at least considering a union? I actually want to know the answer to that. Yes or No will do.

Brokeasspot

What is on the long app?