JoeyMeatballs

When does your contract become amendable?

Jughead135

At what point does it become more economical (for the company) to raise pay rates to the point where folks stick around, versus a steady departure rate (i.e., training costs walking out the door)?

Barley

Well when they're paying people a guarantee equating to $34,000/year for the first 12 months (and then paying tens of thousands below market every year after that) I imagine that greatly offsets the expense in training costs; thus, reducing any burn felt from attrition. ULCCs have no reason to increase pay. The attrition is very low and regionals will provide a steady stream of folks looking for greener grass for as long as needed. The only two things an aspiring candidate or newhire at Frontier can hope for is 1) a quick upgrade and 2) this experiment of theirs eventually works. Presently I'm not very happy or confident with their relaunch of the brand identity nor the time it is taking to restructure the business. I think we're getting farther and farther behind in a limited time of great opportunity.

Barley

2017. Pretty awesome, eh?

OpenClimb

We are so far below the market that attrition costs the company less than a pay raise would cost.

Let's say our pilot payroll is in the neighborhood of $80 million a year. If we received an across-the-board 20% raise, the cost to the company would be $16 million. (This still leaves us well short of the industry average for flying an Airbus, btw)

If we say it costs $25k to train up a new pilot, the break-even point on attrition is roughly 640 pilots per year or a little more than 50 per month.

Of course these numbers are only my wild guesses, but run whatever numbers you believe to be true and I bet you come to the same conclusion. An attrition rate of less than 5 per month doesn't break the squelch.

I think the only way we'll see a raise to stem attrition is when staffing levels start leading to sufficiently-expensive operational problems. Start canceling even one flight a day at a cost of $50k per flight and you're quickly talking real money to an airline the size of Frontier.

Just my humble opinion.

JoeyMeatballs

That sucks, I'm sure we won't have one by then either

Barley

By then I'll be face down in a gutter living in a van down by the river.

JoeyMeatballs

You and me both

sulkair

I've tried to compile all the pay rates for an easy comparison. VA and Jet Blue's raises are included. Tabs at bottom show various options.

Majors

Duksrule

Nice charts...thanks for the effort. Maybe add a column on the pilots page showing retirements. Again thanks.