Thanks! I landed at SWA. Under the current contract, moving over after 1.5 years at spirit is almost exactly dollar-neutral because of the earlier upgrade at Spirit, but otherwise compensation is nearly identical with spirit actually coming out slightly ahead on base salary but having slightly lower 401k DC and no profit sharing. So it was essentially a zero-zero decison regarding money. It came down to management's attitude towards employees. I will say that the spirit pilot group was great and leaving that did cause me a little thought, but 2 years ago I was working with a lot of great people in the USAF and I quit THAT job due to mis-management also.

Anyone with over 3-4 years at Spirit would make more staying at spirit vs. switching to SWA, from what I saw with my amateur earnings calculator. I used "typical" credit rates for the calculation, not min guarantee and while I'm sure people could make the numbers show whatever they want, the pay scales are very similiar with the upgrade time being the major difference between the two, financially. That's why I figure that someone joining Spirit *today* ought to really be considering staying long term especially if they get anywhere near upgrade before they think they have any other options. Once the money is about the same, which it is now, a job seeker with options is basically picking what management team they want to work for. SWA has decades of consecutive profitability with no furlough history, and that's also a consideration. After that, the benefits living in base simply cannot be underestimated. It's much harder to DROP flying at SWA but pretty easy to ADD flying if you're in base, so living in base can add an easy 20% to your paycheck once you're senior enough to pick up the easy high credit or premium pay trips.

Of course, SWA will be redoing it's contract in 2020 so that could tip the money scales pretty far if the industry trends continue.

This place will always be a stepping stone. It’s the equivalent to a regional pretending to be a major. Nice to see the good guys getting turned down and the others getting picked up by the majors. Unfortunately I think I’m stuck here being in the top 25%.

I'm sure you're also stuck on most people's no fly list with that attitude. Lighten up once in awhile, you'll live longer.

Don’t know what’s going on, but a shortage of new hires creating a FO displacement for the next bid, and only 8 new hires projected for July?? I thought December was a fluke.

Two new hires short on one of the June classes created the "displacement" which is really just a re-balancing. This per the email that was sent out alongside the vacancy bid.

Summer classes have dropped to one per month due to the need to have instructors on the line. The intent is to resume four classes per month at the end of the summer flying season. This per instructor chatter at my recent training events. Most classes have a capacity of 15/16 so maybe they also reduced class size over the summer?

Glad you understand what's going on. 8 upgrades isn't anything more than even for retirements and early outs. Please explain what's going on for the FO's? Are we claiming we didn't fill classes? If so maybe we should pay the new hires a real wage during training!! thanks

I’ll believe your info if dn wisconsin could corroborate.

I don’t believe all that “instructor resources” hooey for one minute. More than likely, the slowdown in hiring is a preemptive staffing level adjustment for the implementation of PBS. PBS will require a double-digit reduction in staffing from what line bidding with conflicts required, and the only way to get there while still taking deliveries is to slow the hiring flow. Get used to the stagnation until a new order is imminent or we reach 7 crews per A/C instead of the current 8.5.

You don't believe in the instructor hooey but you make up your own assumption that the usual summer slowdown is because of PBS which is still like 8 months away? lmao. And what source are you getting this number that staffing levels will decrease from 8.5 to 7 with PBS? Not saying you are wrong but I have not seen one person in the actual know quoted as saying as such. PBS is a bidding system for already made trips not a magical staffing reducer.

Let’s call the numbers my educated guess, maybe it’s 7.5 instead of 7. But there is no question that PBS is a magical staffing reducer. Look how balanced the RSV staffing alone is throughout the month already. A decent percentage of us actually have to block more under this contract than we did under the last contract to make the same amount of money per month. Who do you think used to cover all those dropped trips in the first few days of the month someone got paid for while sitting at home? As of the signing date, we were instantly fat. Both the company and ALPA would agree to that, it’s the numbers they disagree slightly about. FWIW, the NC skirted this question when I asked them directly during negotiations. They said they had an estimated percentage staffing reduction in mind under PBS, but weren’t willing to share the number.