Left Handed

I think we need to look at the big picture here. I recently did a flight Houston to Las Vegas. Let's look at the numbers. I'm an 11 year captain and I make $165 an hour (way too low). It took three hours to do the flight. I made $495. Now divide that by 182 seats, and then divide that by 1272 miles. The answer you get is .00213 CASM for me. That's 2 thousandths of a penny per mile I'm costing the company. If I were to get a raise to $250 an hour, my portion of CASM would be .00312. The cost would only go up .0009 cents. Now, you also have to include the FO at roughly 2/3 of that. When the company says our CASM is around 5.5 and says it would go up by any appreciable amount they are lying. Even if we all got a raise to $500 an hour, our CASM would still be under six cents. Yes, this may be oversimplified and there are intangibles that I cannot quantify here. But to say a raise to industry-standard pay would cripple the company, is flat out wrong. We would still have one of the lowest CASMs in the industry, and one of the highest percent profit. And by the way my retro check is approaching $160,000 and climbing.

Not calling you out specifically, your post had CASM in it.

Feng

Good summary. Looking at the big picture though. Traditionally airline costs are 30% for airplanes, 30% for fuel, and 30% for payroll. The first two items the company won't be able to do anything about. The last one though, being the ULCC like it is with low RASM, that's where it'll need to be significantly lower than non ULCC competitors. If they staffed and paid the airline (not just the pilots) like a legacy airline, that profit would shrink away rather quickly.

Hell, even the janitors in Miramar, if they weren't outsourced, can come up with fancy charts and numbers that say if Spirit paid the 10 of them $1 million a year each, it'd still be huuuugely profitable company. But it just ain't gonna happen.

I think you're the only ones counting that retro check, because I doubt anyone cares.

The only thing that matters is what the mediators, arbitrators, the members of NMB, and the president thinks. And if Spirit has indeed proposed wages and work rules similar to it's counterparts, and if they consider the counterparts are Allegiant, Frontier, and Sun Country. There will never be a strike because the company will have deemed to be negotiating in good faith. I'm sure your union will do their best to compare itself to United, Delta, AA...etc, but once the revenue comparisons are laid out, I just don't see it happening.

Good luck though.

Feng

Feel free to correct me and contribute to the conversation. It's an open forum you know!!

Left Handed

Yeah, I was being facetious with the retro check. I just looked up flights from Houston to Vegas. On Saturday (fight night), Spirit is $59 one-way. United ranges from $81 basic economy to over $2000. On the Friday of Labor Day weekend, Spirit is $169 and United ranges from $235 to over $1000. I am under no illusions that Spirit will keep the ticket price the same. Using my previous example of an $85 an hour raise, Spirit would have to raise ticket prices 46 cents to cover my portion of the flight. Spirit could even raise tickets $20 and still be well underneath the average price going to Vegas. We would still be an ultra low-cost carrier. It would just cost a consumer slightly more money to go somewhere. If Spirit were smart, they would just increase the bag fee by a dollar and they could keep their "low ticket price" image.

I believe I saw somewhere that the company does not consider allegiant our peer. They do consider Frontier, Southwest, JetBlue, Alaska, and Virgin to be our peers as well as the big three. We will see how that plays out. I do agree that it's basically up to the mediator as to who is being more reasonable. Last time we were released in a bankruptcy environment when we were asking to be paid more than USAir drivers. The mediator finally got tired of the company shenanigans and let us walk. I see the company making the same mistakes as last time so we will have to wait and see how farthe mediator let's it go.

Macjet

Don't forget ol' BBBBooooo, BBBbooobbbb, bbbbbbbb, Bob makes more than Gary Kelly. Who is his peer?

Lemon Jello

Check your decimal placement. Love, the Math Nazi.

Left Handed

Which one?
165 times 3 divided by 182 divided by 1276 = .00213

Qotsaautopilot

There is much more to being a ULCC than labor. Aircraft utilization for one and real estate for two. How the other work groups get paid is up to them. We negotiate for ourselves. Revenue will increase with an industry standard pilot contract and cost associated with IROPs will go down.

Feng,

Give me one good reason why you are here managing down our expectations and telling us who our "peers" are and how you think an airline cost structure works? As a pilot that isn't benificial to you in any way whether you work at spirit or not. If you work at a lobor busting law firm like ford and Harrison or are a member of spirit management I can see your motivation. You seemed to have clearly picked a side and I can tell you it's the wrong one.

And btw I am counting on full retro so it's safe to say it's more than one of us. Delta got it. Hawaiian got it. It's industry standard.

IWalkJun12

They can add a pilot happiness fee on the website for all care. FUPM

Lemon Jello

True that, but it's 2/1000's of a dollar, not a cent.