We have done great perks to our contract but are they worth the 40-50k total compensation diff per year that we make as a 2nd yr FO's?

It will be very interesting to see what DAL gets this contract cycle.

We are waaaay behind, but I get the feeling mgmt will argue that our peer group is frontier, allegiant and sun country.

 

I put the 2017 pay scale since if you got hired today you would spend most of your time at that scake

 

Got it. Smart!

 

That's a big Afirm!

 

A few off the top of my head:

United:

1) Has 'ready reserve'
2) Reserve days off are rolled routinely

Delta:

1) PBS work blocks can 'stack' multiple four day trips back to back with FAR117 weekly rest at outstation.

 

Squeeze on the hiring pipeline? Dirtbag regional airline pilot groups can't even accomplish that and they actually have horrible contracts. There will be a long line ready to work at Spirit for years to come. Management probably would like some attrition actually.

 

Ask the guys at endeavor about that

 

I left Spirit after 8 months to come to UAL.

At Spirit I was on reserve except my last month where I was a line holder. Overall, I have about a year of sitting reserve at UAL and a little over a year as a very junior line holder. From a QOL perspective here is my take on it. Broadly speaking, if you can get the transition conflict to work as a reserve guy at Spirit, you will have more days off. However, if you don't get that transition conflict or when you are actually on reserve, UAL does have better rules overall. We all start out on long call and you can't start (unless you want to) before late in the morning on your day one of reserve blocks as well. Furthermore, the long call system does make it very worthwhile for those who commute to reserve to pick up trips. Yes, we do have 'ready reserve' but those can work in your favor to pick them up, especially if you live in base, pick a ready reserve time between hub banks, as that buries yourself in the reserve order for the rest of your reserve blocks. I have picked up ready reserve times to bury myself to avoid getting called out on a trip. Also, if you have more than two ready reserves or accelerations to short call assignments, you get an additional hour over guarantee if you aren't going to break it for every instance they do that. In about a year of actually sitting reserve here, I had my day rolled once (it actually worked in my favor). L-CAL, yes, they did roll reserve day offs a lot. But with the new system it costs them a lot of money to do it and it is happening a lot less as they fixed a lot of staffing issues that were leading to the rolled days. There are some other nice things in the contract that does make reserve not that bad at UAL from a QOL perspective.

As a line holder, the monthly credits are higher at UAL and days off similar if you can't get the transition conflict. We also have a min day and duty rig that make the trips pretty productive or you will get paid. Basically, if your TAFB is more than 74ish hours the trips will pay 22ish hours at least.

Yes, four days off between trips and the transition conflict language is awesome. Industry leading.

I also like PBS better than a line bidding system. For me, it allows the flexibility to bid specific days off I need up front a lot easier than worrying about getting a line and then trying to trade around with the line improvement windows, etc.

Hope this broke down some specifics about the QOL comparison. Yes, Spirit does have great QOL, but the point I am making is you can have good pay WITH QOL provisions and you all need to go for both next round.

I wish the Spirit guys and gals the best of luck. It wouldn't surprise me if Spirit management offers early in negotiations nice pay rates but with a PBS scheduling system as a pilot negotiation divisional tactic.

 

Thanks for the analysis Mark. Fair and balanced!

 

I think having to have 1500 hours TT has a lot more to do with recruiting problems at the regionals/commuters. Regardless, hoping to dissuade pilots from staying at Spirit as a way to gain negotiating leverage is a fool's errand.