beech1980

I think Sun country is at 62 planes with 12 being Amazon and about 600-620 pilots give or take.

N1sync

nobody wants the sunseeker baggage, if we were acquired the acquirer would immediately take a half billion dollar loss and then some to unload a hotel nobody wants.

tom11011

Your count is way off.

Margaritaville

They'll spin off the airline and let the Travel Company run Sunseeker. The airline either gets sold or liquidated.

Their apathy in negotiations makes it obvious that they are tired of running an airline.

akulahunter

From the people I have talked to the company has not proposed a staffing model, so once again, whoever you are getting your information from is an idiot. Not sure about an unstacking percentage, but I find that hard to believe also when the company blew up negotiations years ago after the union agreed to an unstacking percentage in SmartPref, but people outside of the negotiation wanted 100%. The same people are still in charge in upper management and there has been no indication that those people have changed their minds about wanting 100% control. (not to mention, without a staff model, unstacking is a chump's play anyway.)

Now the real question... you asked how can we be lightyears apart. For me... No LTD = No Vote. For me, that is the Grand Canyon. Throw in: no block or better by leg, no protection for day trips (or alternately TAFB rig which I have heard the company balked at), continued reduced day off months, no day off protection (i.e. moving days off), continued involuntary TDY. I believe THAT is how we are lightyears apart. Individually, any of these things (except LTD) are probably negotiable, but together they equal a chasm that isn't close to being bridged.

I just wish that people on here would try to see both sides of what is going on. I have spoken to people on both sides of this, if you ask the right person in management, you'll see that what the union is putting out is much more accurate than the positive spin that certain management/instructors have put on this from the company side (most of which have no idea of what is actually happening in the room). The devil is always in the details. (For example, Issue X, has five items. When comparing to the industry standard, if Item One is higher by 1% and Items Two through Five are lower by 50%, is Issue X higher or standard?) The company has a way of "telling the truth" that is not always the truth you think. Remember during COVID they told us that we needed to take pay cuts because the government was only giving them 70% of payroll. True, but it was 70% of 2019 payroll when the average pilot credited 85 hours, which more than covered our payroll for min hours, ETO, etc. Take everything (from both sides) with a grain of salt.

No matter what any of us think about what is going on, I guarantee you (100%) that logic is not what is being used to solve this problem. As stated above, Pilots look at this as a pilot issue and see the pilot hiring environment. Nobody knows what M's plan is (JR made his plans known in SFB). The company has a long-term plan, pilots may not be a part of it. Uncle M was on TV this weekend for 20+ minutes in an interview prior to the NASCAR race. He looked pretty happy there. When was the last time he was happy with the airline? Unless you are Uncle M, JR, or SS, you probably have no idea where this train is headed. Plan accordingly.

For those of you in group 2, I'll see you on the picket line.

[Fun poll: how many bases will we have in September 2023?]

captnate702

We agree on a lot of this stuff - especially LTD. That is a nonstarter.

As for the staffing model, my source was pretty definitive and i haven't been wrong yet on sharing the stuff i'm hearing. Management proposed a staffing model. i was told it was not United or Jetblue but it guaranteed a minimum number of pilots per aircraft. I don't know what that number was, only that it was put in the last offer from MG. i checked back with my source on the unstack again and it was also in the last offer with the staffing model. The only detail i was given was that it was less than Delta's unstack.

I don't think any pilots care about a TAFB rig - why would you with our current day trips? every pilot i have talked to and common sense is that guaranteeing the day trip model is way more important than a TAFB that is irrelevant to 99% of our trips.

I also have a hard time believing MG would be chasing AR and flying down to goodyear just so he could turn this place into a hospitality company - that doesn't pass the smell test. Why would MG retire from CEO and then spend 2-3 weeks a month with AR if the plan was to spin off the airline? Maybe he is just trying to push through a crappy deal to boost the stock, etc. and if that is the case then he's an idiot for thinking the Union would let us vote on a crappy deal, but I think there's more to this.

we'll never know MG's true motivations but if i'm a billionaire who just retired as CEO, i wouldn't be chasing down some Union boss and insert myself into contract negotiations unless it was a huge priority and critical to the company where i hold the most shares. will be interesting to see what if anything we learn in the coming weeks.

union reps have been adamant that the union busting media blitz is coming, hopefully AR will give us some more details and explanation when the blitz starts.

tom11011

I think we are saying the same thing in different words, but unless day trips and outstation style basing is codified, we need to expect that we will go to a model with some overnights. Frontier currently has day trips and overnights.

captnate702

To me, that is the most important work rule to get in the contract. way more important than unstack, staffing model, etc. that typical unions love because they drive heads and therefore increased union dues.

Keeping day trips is by far the most important to me because the only reason i am still here is for the day trips and keeping my time as my time. I assume every other pilot here wants day trips to stay because why else would anyone possibly be here? Its not hyperbole to say that there is literally nothing else this place has to offer compared to all the other places hiring right now.

tom11011

I don't think Allegiant as an independent airline can survive. We have no choice but to become larger through other methods besides growth.

akulahunter

I talked to my "guy" in management. Looks like your source was semi-correct. The company put together a pass that included an unstack and staffing model. (Assuming it is going to be passed to the union today since they are supposed to be meeting.) Where he was not as accurate is that the unstacking proposed was "more than double" delta's unstacking. My guy wouldn't be more specific than that. For those playing at home, delta can unstack 30% which means the company proposal is somewhere between 61-99%. The staffing model from what I was told was a straight per-aircraft pilot count that would be lower than the number of pilots we are staffing to currently. The point of a staffing model is to account for all of the known absences (and unknown absences). More than 60% is ridiculous, especially if they plan to lower the pilot count per plane. Hopefully, this is the first salvo in working towards a happy medium. We should be fighting over LTD, etc not the last 10% either way on the stack %.

I was not saying that a TAFB was important. I was saying that the company refuses to agree to any percentage of day trips. None. They want the flexibility to do what they want. I was just saying that the company has also balked at TAFB pointing to the fact that we're a "day-trip" airline. Can't have it both ways. Either commit to day trips or stop using it as an excuse to offer less everywhere else.

We can definitely agree in hoping that AR increases the breadth of information shared in the updates. From his videos (until the last one), it looked like scheduling was the major issue remaining and they were close-ish or at least not in different universes on the other stuff. (I've been hearing all along that that wasn't the case, but you'd never know it.) In the last video, he laid it all out there and I think it surprised a lot of people, although it shouldn't have. Anyone who thought that the union and company had agreed on everything but scheduling and AR was holding the contract hostage for his pet project hasn't put on their thinking cap.