If you’re talking about a 20-25 year FO, most of the QOL he doesn’t want to give up is more the result of bidding near single digit seniority (at least on the NB) in BES than it is contractual. He can basically do anything he wants- dictate his schedule, cherry pick trips, get endless PPU. It would be very hard to create a scenario where he can go over to the left seat & maintain that lifestyle. (RSV enhancements, for example, would not be a factor because he’s already senior enough to avoid it.)

Which is fine. Life is good at the top, so more power to anyone who wants to stay at the top of their niche rather than slug it out in another. But no matter how many work rule improvements you pass, going from 5% FO to 50% CA is always going to involve giving some things up.

Don’t get me wrong- I think there are some broadly popular QOL improvements we should be going after. But for anyone who truly is purely QOL motivated, his lifestyle will always be better in the left seat than it will in the right.

 

For a while spirit pilots at any seniority level had *almost* all of the benefits of the 5% FO you described. Then they gave up line bidding and a whole bunch of other things on their last contract for a small raise. They could literally clear lines down to zero, even the guys on reserve. Then go back and pick up endless PPU if they wanted.

QOL is EVERYTHING. Pay becomes more and more worthless by the day, especially these days.

 

I'm surprised no one brought up the comparison with the Tumi TA.

UAL - 737-MAX8/9 & 900 - $324.74 (2024)

 

Because that was a purely “BS” rate. It included the 5% that was bought and paid for with he pandemic LOA. Most people I know expect that 5% to be on top since it’s looking like we’re 4 months away from cracking 4 qtrs of profit margin over 5% anyway.

 

That only works when PPU itself is infinite. Somebody has to work weekends. Holidays. Red-eyes. Somebody’s going to get the PPU & someone’s going to be 25th in the queue. Seniority dictates how all that flying is allocated & more, & under nearly all circumstances, upgrading involves a loss of relative seniority. Even under the best of times, I doubt a top 10% FO at Spirit wouldn’t have suffered any QOL loss by upgrading.

As much as pilots love to say it, the reality is QOL is not EVERYTHING. It’s a lot. But pay & QOL are on a spectrum. (“Pay is worthless”? I don’t even know what that means.) We’d all have better QOL in the right seat than in the left, but the fact that so few make a full career of it supports the idea that it’s one among multiple considerations people actually base their decisions on.

 

It was a 40% raise. And the days you could drop where days you would not get premium for, and it was according to seniority, not everyone could drop everything, and the rules for dropping trips did not change at all. And our lines where worse than what I can get with PBS. But yes, our reserve rules got absolutely decimated.

 

yeah but you had leverage and didn’t need to give up line bidding and gut reserve for that raise… now you’re lagging again but all of that reserve qol is gone. Giving up work rules never works out in the end.

 

Fortunately the overwhelming response to TA1 makes it pretty clear that giving up anything for “smoke & mirrors” pay raises is not on the table. But what most pilots call QOL is a balance of making a decent living (pay) at a job they enjoy (work rules). Any good contract addresses both sides of that equation. I’m not willing to trade labor protections for pay, but neither am I willing to lose money to inflation just to stop sitting FSBY.

The argument over which side of the equation would better increase the rate of upgrades is mostly academic, in my opinion, since that is not really our problem to solve. My point was that the example used (i.e., VERY senior FOs) was a demographic that are unlikely to upgrade under almost any contract as they have made sacrifices to enjoy seniority-based perks that they just can’t have at their relative seniority in the left seat. Some guys just want to be top 10% in any seat & that’s fine. My assumption is that for the majority of mid to lower seniority FOs who are holding off on upgrade, the magic formula would be a mix of improved work rules (RSV, commuting, etc.) & a pay structure that keeps everyone above inflation but with greater increases to the CA scale, thereby offering a clear opportunity to make more money in the left seat. I think that would end unfilled CA vacancies in the same way the right rules & compensation package would ultimately solve the training dept/LCA problem.

 

What was this leverage you speak of that we had? We had an injunction slapped on us! But yes, we did give up reserve drops which sucks. Gaining LTD, DC etc plus pay were pretty huge gains for us. Many forget how far behind we were back then as far as industry standard went in 2018.

 

Alaska flies 777s and 787s now???? Caaause thats our 777 787 rates, as others stated. Pls edit your post to "$283 for CA" on our 737s