Not sure TBH, buddy sent me a text this morning.

I'm about as far as an AA cheerleader as you will find and I'll have to disagree with the above. You can't do more than 6 days in a row of reserve, and if anyone is doing 6 on one off they are most likely doing it by choice.

Hope you guys get a nice contract. Good luck.

It's all over their forum subsection. Oh wait nevermind just the news about their massive hiring boom.

This almost seems staged.


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4200496/Cash-Ousside-Girl-13-punches-passenger-plane.html?ito=social-twitter_dailymailus

Thanks, appreciate you wanting us to get a well deserved contract.
I thought your work rules mirrored 117? I have talked to a few AA crews and they complain that they are not notified until the day prior to give them their day off on reserve. I have also seen 6 on with a day off and another 6 of reserve. Maybe they miss bid on their pref bid.
It's not possible here for that.

Here is the transcript piece from the investor update today and Bobs reply to a contract question.

Helane Becker - Cowen and Company, LLC

Okay. And then just – so you called out in the press release the fact that you are still negotiating with your pilots, and actually yesterday they sent an email out to people with a note that they want to, I guess, meet up with the analyst or something to let us know what they are doing versus what maybe- what they want versus maybe what you're willing to give them. And I don't want you to negotiate obviously in public but this is an open contract for a while now. I mean what can we expect? Usually you guys have been known, especially Bob, in prior life getting these contracts done in a timely fashion. So what can we think about in terms of time of getting this one done?

Robert L. Fornaro - Spirit Airlines, Inc.

Hi. Good question. First of all, we are in mediation and if you back, we've been in mediation since last summer. And the pilots requested mediation and we opted to join them. And mediation naturally slows down the process. I think we've completed about 20 of 31 sections. But we have not hit the difficult ones, mostly the ones around money.

And eventually we're not that far away from getting in there. And over this period of time the ask of the pilots has gone up several times. And our position is, and we understand the pilots are going to get a substantial increase, but we also know if you want what are the relevant wage rates, we've got to have similar or equal work rules.

And we have a relatively unproductive contract, again negotiated 10, 12 or 13 years ago when we were a much different airline. And it's very difficult to scale an airline like ours to an agreement that was signed many, many years ago. So we have to again we have to accomplish a number of things in the agreement. But when we're done, we expect the pilots to get a substantial increase and we expect to get an improvement in work rules that are necessary and are typical across the industry. So again, we are at a (33:50).

Helane Becker - Cowen and Company, LLC

Thank you for that. It was more than I thought I was going to get.

Robert L. Fornaro - Spirit Airlines, Inc.

Okay.

Helane Becker - Cowen and Company, LLC

Just on hiring levels, are you still finding it easy on a relative basis to attract quality applicants to the pool?

Robert L. Fornaro - Spirit Airlines, Inc.

We feel pretty good about it. And we have got a growth rate of 18%. And yes, we are going to meet those targets. So I think it's – I think the outlook here is positive from that perspective.

Bless his heart I think he has done a decent job as CEO but I'll be damned if he isnt a goober sometimes.

The spoken word written in textual form always looks odd but make no mistake about what he said.
Fornaro expects concessions in work rules if we are to get wages anywhere close to legacy wages.
Whether it's the 4days off between trips, or the ability to drop single reserve days, or the transition language. He wants concessions.

It's amazing how they preach they want efficient schedules and don't want to pay us for sitting around but then build pairings with one leg worth 2.5 hours two out of four days.

There's pairing in ORD for March that has 3 legs in 4 days and it's only worth 18 hours. Real efficient.

Has there been an airline in recent history that got significant gains while retaining pretty much everything work rule wise?

The company can shove any TA up their ass if they think they're getting Red/Green. We fought hard for it, I don't expect it to go anywhere.......