wilco811

CVG for sure! and BLI?! No way it B gone! Rest of your list is spot on i think

Margaritaville

LAS, PVU, IWA, SFB, PIE, PGD, CVG, PIT, FLL. Pretty much the bases as they were back in 2014 except BLI gets replaced with PVU. That's the rollback we're talking about here. 600 pilots, 70 a/c, 9 bases.

Closed bases get vacancy reduced and pilots aren't given displacement rights. Union swoops in at the last minute and negotiates limited rights then pats themselves on the back for "winning" again. All the older CRT 320s and the 319s get parked. No furloughs, they let attrition bleed it down. Some captain downgrades are inevitable.

This won't happen in one fell swoop, it will take place over a couple of years. It will be sold as a great thing, similar to the 80 drawdown. Turning G4 back into a lean mean fighting machine or something like that.

wilco811

That’ll be the beginning of the end of allegiant. People will flee like you’ve never seen before.

JediCheese

This is the right answer. If anyone is hiring, starting downgrades is the kiss of death to the airline as people flee.

If they're going to close bases, they'll likely combine it with the 737 transition. Close out a base and displace people to the 737.

Margaritaville

And the die hards who live in the OG bases (the ones they intend to keep) aren't going anywhere. Most of the people who would flee are new and are in the small bases. The top 10% in the small bases, allegiant lifers, will just pick a new base. They'll have no problem keeping about 600 pilots on property. Going forward, they'll have no problem hiring the middle aged guys who have had a sucky career or mid life career changers who live in a base and want to work for an airline but don't want to travel or move. When the regionals collapse, there's a lot of older regional lifers who are going to be looking for a new gig. They may think they'll get a mainline staple, but they won't. Then they'll come here.

A few years ago the interview process was heavily geared toward weeding out ladder climbers. They did a really good job of figuring out who was looking to stay here and who was just going to get a type and jump ship. During the big growth phase after 2014 and the recent pilot shortage, a lot of that just went away, and they hired a bunch of younger guys who obviously weren't planning one retiring here, but at least they kept the seat warm. I see the company going back to the old hiring practices of hiring those who clearly want to be here, have few other options, and plan to stay.

Be Realistic

I may not have been at G4 as long as many here, but I have said it before and I will say it again, No Way this board survives shrinking to 60 a/c. Investors will bail the moment it starts to shrink, share price will plummet (no debating that - its market cap is very low with shrinkage due to staffing), and the company will either be bought hostile, or offered for sale. It will be game over at that point. No board will talk their way out of it, and MG will be 5 foot under pushing up roses before he has any opportunity to buy it all back. And lets be honest, why would he? His legacy is over at that point. The only way to survive is to grow to profitability.

So one more time for the folks in the back. If Allegiant starts to shrink, attrition will accelerate like gravity, and a tail spin will start which cant be stopped. I just hope I'm not here to see it.

wilco811

I really can’t believe this place is going to do overnights out of 9 bases. Is that even possible for this place that can’t even get the pax count straight much of the time? It’ll be the meltdown of the century the minute they try it.

captnate702

This right here^^^^

I’m sure management would love to do overnights and maximize pilot time, but they know that would result in a total meltdown. We can’t run a clean operation with the most dummy-proof schedule/network in the industry. Management knows that cancellations are killers and have bragged to walk street that delays are no big deal as long we don’t have cancellations. Multi day trips will cause a huge spike in cancellations.

The stuff I’m hearing is that MG and the general are still following Andrew around trying to whisper in his ear that we need to get a new contract soon. Also hearing that exco does not want to talk about money and pay scales until management agrees on arbitration rules. RLA pretty much tells you what the arbitration rules are so I’m not sure what this means, but that’s the snippet I’ve been told from ppl in the union and what Andrew has said in multiple videos. I’ve also heard the exco doesn’t want to pass pay scales until the United TA becomes public so we don’t get leapfrogged again.

9easy

I think the thought process is, the next contract isn't any good if there isn't any way to enforce it, because the company will just violate it anyway.

The truth lies somewhere in between - the current contract is garbage, written with horrible ambiguities full of ways for misinterpretation. If this was ALPA, they would just copy+paste boiler plate language from existing contracts with best practices, but instead we are re-inventing the wagon wheel here in 2022.

captnate702

Frankly, I am exhausted with the Exco bragging about how many grievances we file and telling me to file a grievance for everything - to what end? So my grievance can be arbitrated 3 years later when we lose? Exco is so worried about section 19 and being able to arbitrate but keeps losing arbitrations. A former union member told me we’ve lost six straight arbitrations. I asked him: “if the company is always blatantly violating the contract like exco says, why do we keep losing?” Something is not adding up…

I would prefer at this point the priority be getting a good deal done, not bickering about arbitration rules that are already established. When the surveys came back with resounding plea for work rules, it was for scheduling work rules, not arbitration rules. I’m sure the exco will tell me to just keep filing those grievances tho…