Rocinante

This. There are a thousand question marks, and they all give us pause at best. The legacies have established track records of paying the most, stable bases, and top shelf work rules. Their next round of contract negotiations will almost certainly keep them at the top by some margin. Their upgrades are as fast or faster than Spirit's (Delta...), retirements will keep the seniority train chugging, and widebody options for those who want them. They will be affected least by staffing woes.

Meanwhile, we're already seeing coverage awards from PBS, reserve shortages, etc. Summer will be a bloodbath, and spring break will be a fun preview of that. Our IT fails us time and time again. Base closures and co-base headaches are probably in the cards with this merger, and our future includes babysitting 1500 hour wonders in the right seat of an Airbus who have no concept for contract negotiations. All that while we wait patiently several years to see if a JCBA might be on par with legacies.

The problem is the legacies are hiring now. Right now. The train is leaving the station. This is the most time sensitive choice many of us will see in our careers. The damage is being done in real time. Industry standard pay rates/contract bullet points needed to happen yesterday. Not today, not tomorrow, and certainly not in several years when this merger gets hammered out.

Halon1211

speaking of Franke, the man is 84 years but seems like he is in good health. Anybody thing he will hang is hat up soon? Or do you think he will be running the ship for the years to come?

GenderPilot

If Biden can run the country at his age, Frankie can run Spirit at his!

FNGFO

Southwest is only able to run about 3/4s of their schedule and are desperately short on staffing. They’re also, much to their amazement, finding that a ton of people are not into 10 year upgrades and flying the guppy the rest of their life, and are having serious attrition problems of their own. You can make good money there if you want to put in the work, but it is not anything close to Herb’s wunderkompany anymore. You haven’t been paying attention if you think they’re not up a different branch of the same creek as us.

Kindly shove the “wanna leave then leave tripe” in your preferred receptacle. I haven’t been here as long as I have, nor have many others, just waiting on the legacies to hire any warm body that applies. I also don’t have my head in the sand with regard to what is unfolding. The OP suggested we’d just park all those gas guzzling CEOs perhaps not realizing that he just volunteered to park half the Spirit fleet. It was poor reasoning.

FNGFO

They’ll have to pry his cold dead hands off the tiller, or remove the tiller and let him take it to his grave.

JoeFever1

What SWA has, and we NEED, is much better FO rates. Making 180 plus waiting for upgrade is a lot more tolerable than 120.

Excargodog

If that were the case Franke would have retired a decade ago…

Excargodog

And first year rates less than regional first year rates don’t help either. I know UPS gets away with that, and that their rates are even lower, but second year there is $192, so it ain’t EXACTLY the same.

BoilerUP

$205.68 starting 1 Sept 22.

TOGALOCK

Nobody is blind to the situation or “has their head in the sand”. We all see what you see and are well aware that this could get messy. If it will or not is yet to be seen and those hard set that it will are working off pure emotion and speculation. History suggests that things probably aren’t going to turn out as horrible as some say that it will. We all know there are rough waters ahead. You running around screaming like your hair is on fire, telling us we’re all blind because we’re not doing the same thing, and saying how we’re all doomed doesn’t make you the smart one - It just makes you the hysterical one. I’ve had two careers in my life. In both of which, especially my last one, self preservation and making sure I went home every night was reliant on keeping a clear head and not letting emotions get the best of me during a crisis, regardless of physical or emotional stress at the time. A quality pilots *should* have, but many clearly demonstrate that they don’t. Jumping ship this early in the game without any real facts about the future is a knee jerk emotional response.

There is uncertainty everywhere in the industry right now. If you want to start over and go to the bottom of a 14000 pilot seniority list at a company that’s hiring far more pilots than they need to simply fill retirements while burning $10 million per day in the middle of skyrocketing oil prices, increasing interest rates, inflation, a teetering economy, and the start of an international conflict… you be my guest. I, along with others who aren’t afraid of their own shadow, will strap in for the ride ahead and abandon ship if necessary when the actual facts of the situation, not speculation and emotion, dictate that it’s time.