DrDHD

actually captain upgrades have slowed from 32 planned to 20 for the next 8 months due to massive amounts of FO’s quitting (attrition.) plan was for growth and many upgrades until every legacy started hiring our newly minted FO’s making 56 bucks an hour. Any legacy is a pay raise for new guys. Can’t upgrade Captains if we don’t even have first officers. This simple fact should worry any FO here who wants to upgrade or any junior captain.

jetblueballs

Personally I think those quick upgrade times are over at least for the next 4-5 years until we get another big plane order. Do the math with how many planes we have on property and how many we will have in the next 5 years. With very little retirements, I’d say anyone hired today would be looking at 5 year minimum and that’s if they can even upgrade on this current fleet order as how things stand now we are well over half way to our current fleet projection on this order.

symbian simian

​​​​​Maybe you should consider changing your handle to "golden shower" so we don't get confused where you work.

MCDUmanipulator

Gotta love the same 4 or 5 people always complaining.

bruhaha

um. The point of being an airline pilot is to fly as little as possible. So that you can do other things like go out on your sailboat or drive around in your sports car Miata. I personally like running my own pit smoker. But to each their own.

if you love flying then just buy your own airplane and just go flying. Or go to southwest. I hear they really fly a lot

we also don’t have any helicopters at spirit. There are some regional airlines that will take helo pilots.

Cyio

Lots of negative replies to your question, so here is a more balanced one.

1. You will be on reserve anywhere between 8 months up to perhaps 1.5 years. Depending on the base you will either fly a lot or a little. You can’t pick up flying on reserve but you can put yourself on the “call me first” list. This will drive more flying your way.

2. As for the company treating us great, I would say it’s your fellow pilots, Union, some of the chiefs and our contract that makes it appear the company treats us great. At the end of the day, the company cares about profits, not us.

3. Personally I have had a great experience with the people mentioned above. I will say that we need to increase our IT, we need to fix pay at the lower end of the scales due to slower upgrades. Would also be great to be able to drop/move some reserve days.

All in all, you will be happy here. Hope you come on board just be sure to save for that first year. I can’t emphasize enough what a hit it is, especially that first three months.

HELOWING

The Captain upgrades make sense, this is all good info. Seems that a lot of people are experiencing poor quality of life. What would be a good way to improve it for yourself? Have you tried to move to another company? Any input would be great!

HELOWING

thank you! That all makes sense.

HELOWING

Yes first year pay has to increase I agree. It will be a big hit for me and my family. Otherwise, bases would be great for us. We love florida. The contract will start being negotiated in September or October timeframe. Hopefully, pay raises will come along with better 1st year for new hires.

I know there are a lot of negative posts about my comments. Regardless, it’s great input to hear someone else’s perspective. It’s just hard to know who actually works for spirit since there aren’t any ways to verify due to the format of this forum.

I sincerely appreciate all feedback. It’s going to be a very interesting decade for hiring. Hopefully the economy hold out!

Fah2

You sound like congress when they call a “tax cut” when the tax rate didn’t increase as much as originally planned.

We have been at 20ish upgrades a month since the 2020 leaves ended. Yes it was planned to increase, but it also hasn’t decreased or “slowed”.

Total attrition last year amounted to around 2%. While not something that can be ignored, we are still significantly net positive for number of pilots.

Attrition was highest in the last months of 2021, and even if that same amount continues for all of 2022, there will still be a lot more pilots on property come December than there are now.

The “massive” exodus is a misnomer, and until we reach a point where we are 1) losing more pilots than we hire and 2) unable to fill new hire classes, you just sound foolish pushing this narrative.