Hedley

There has always been different standards of compensation within the industry based on which model one works under. Legacy, ULCC, and regional are all under the same industry, yet all pay differently. In the freight side of the business, Atlas or Kalitta pilots have never made what UPS pilots do. Both fly the same aircraft and do the same job, however working for UPS vs an ACMI means that you are negotiating with a much deeper set of pockets. I'd love to see you guys make major improvements, however I just don't see a ULCC getting contractual parity with a legacy. Without a massive global network, frequent flyer programs that actually attract a large customer base, and the credit card revenue, you're just sticking your hands into a set of shallow pockets.

As far as the ULCC being the wrong model to support, that depends on the perspective of consumer, employee, shareholder, or management. I do think that the ULCC will adapt into a LCC model. The industry has simply made a pizza so cheap that many people don't want to eat it again after trying it. There is a demand for low priced travel, however that company can't incur the same cost as higher priced competition and still sell at a big discount. Raising prices somewhat and greatly improving service, frequency, and reliability should allow significant improvements in ULCC/LCC compensation, I do however believe that there will always be a gap between regionals, ULCC's, and legacies.

VisionWings

Frontier flies passengers. Each one of them has a family. We fly more passengers in a plane than our legacy counterparts. The model is of no consequence. Pay in parity with the number of passenger seats available and responsibility for more lives warrants pay in line with legacy carriers. We did not choose the model. Management did. We can however demand pay that is adequate for our responsibility. We as a pilot have all the leverage and always will. Time to train a pilot to fly the line is long. Cost is high. If we demand pay we will receive that pay.


Fact we fly people

fact we fly more people

fact management is losing money while our job is the exact same as legacy pilots with more workload.

fact planes can’t move themselves. You need a pilot.

fact we have changed “business model” before

fact business model is a management argument and doesn’t change pilot jobs.

fact southwest makes more as an FO than any legacy carrier as what you describe as a LCC and in line with captain pay.

fact our CEO and executives have made pay inline with larger operators. Why would we deserve less when they demand equal pay?

Fact we can get the pay we deserve if we refuse anything less.

LifetimeCFI

I don't care to listen to the argument that we don't make as much as legacy carriers so we shouldn't be paid as such.

It's low cost. They don't need to make as much as a legacy carrier to pay us. They're talking up double digit margins on the horizon. They champion their cost advantage against the competition. They've essentially given away their hand. It's time to pay up.

If you're not an F9 pilot and just stirring the pot here from your cushy legacy job, I'm especially uninterested in hearing about it.

AUnionMemba

76.87% loss of value since going public. Vote of no confidence.

BobSacamano

I don’t like to hear that either. And nobody, not even management, is arguing that we shouldn’t get or don’t deserve a great contract. We deserve the best contract possible.

The reality is that what we want costs money. So like it or not, how much money F9 makes determines what they can pay us. And that’s what matters. Not how much someone thinks they should pay us.

We deserve a great contract. But we won’t get one that’s just not financially possible with RASM less than half of the legacies.

These are really just sort of adult facts that should be kept in mind throughout all this. Some financial analysis from either side vis a vis contract affordability would be much appreciated.

Hedley

The task that is performed and how hard one works at performing that task is not as important as who that task is performed for. An attorney working for a small firm will not command the same compensation as one working for a much larger firm, even though he may practice the same type of law and work harder. The profit per seat mile generateted by a legacy cannot be achieved by Frontier. Kalitta and Atlas both argued that they should be paid like UPS and FedEx. They made significant gains, but they came up short of their initial demands. I can see Frontier pilots making similar gains, but the expectation to be paid on par with Delta just isn't very realistic. I'd love to be proven wrong, but the math has to work. Anyway, I don't have a dog in the fight so I'm going to let it go. I sincerely wish you guys the best possible outcome.

VisionWings

rasm is set by management and their product they choose to render. If the product isn’t desired. Management’s plan isn’t desired and management should be changed. The pilots provide more labor for a lower cost. Your argument is not valid. Management across all industries avoid paying labor every penny they can. You just pointed out once again that we are why frontier can offer a lower price ticket. We deserve equitable pay.

hercretired

Yes, however the union is not the one who will be signing the (hopefully higher) pay checks post-new-contract. That entity (Frontier/Barry) will be the one "defining" peers.

I fully agree with this and believe the union/pilot-group approach to negotiations should be of the "realistic approach" variety. "They fly Airbus and make more, so we should make the same" is not going to work. However, if some union financial geniuses could take Delta and United and strip away their credit card program, their global network, their revenue streams, and reverse engineer their resulting "Airbus salary" after all that is removed, we may have a logical place for negotiating.

ALPA represents Kalitta, Amerijet, ATI. They also represent FedEx. So why don't the first three get FedEx pay?

"ALPA sucks"

Ok fine. The teamsters represent Atlas. UPS Pilots is represted by IPA, while the rest of UPS (non-pilots) is teamsters. Do Atlas dudes get UPS Pay?

"Teamsters suck"

Ok, well

"Those arguments make no sense, Delta, FedEx, and UPS are BIGGER and have the ability to pay big pay. Big airline=Big Pay"

Probably, but maybe not. Or maybe we should be careful at least with that argument. They also have bigger costs, more bodies to pay into retirement matching, more complexities internally, etc etc.

Pay is basically a business decision. Whether pilots are approved to strike and cause a work stoppage, is yet to be seen. Sure, Spirit had a strike. Pre-pandemic.

Remember all that stuff, during COVID, about pilot jobs are critical for instrastructure, airlines must keep flying, national security, blah blah ?

Barry and Frontier lawyers have all that ready to go, in the event they think a strike will happen.

1. There will be no strike
2. There will be no "Delta rates"
3. Yes pay will come up. At every pay contract process in history, pay indeed came up.

VisionWings

supply and demand. Cost of labor. You set your labor cost. We have set the bar by asking for parity. We are not going to settle for anything less. Any argument saying otherwise is not gonna work on this pilot group.

They cannot afford to run the whole airline with scabs. They cannot afford to not pay us. They will pay us what we demand and can sort out the increase labor cost with their creative accounting,

If they can’t do it then replace management.

We do our job. The rate is set by the industry and the pilots that operate the aircraft.


We do more red eyes which have increased risks. We have less resources aboard an active flight such as WiFi to get updates of real time risks. Management doesn’t risk their lives for a revenue flight and they can look at what we’re asking and choose to pay us or step down and let some who can manage the company to afford the new rates of pilots.

JoeFever1

Frontier is a Major airline just like Delta. Atlas should have held out for FedEx pay. No reason they couldn't have achieved it. The entire sum of the contract will not necessary be equal, but pay and other major points should 100% be the same.