Tranquility

Here is my conundrum,

Vote NO, and we run the risk of bird in the hand wages till a possible return to the table with NK till the TPA or JCBA. Yes voters will argue that there’s no guarantee that NK will come back. My argument to them is that they are losing money now precisely because of our staffing issues, and the only reason we came to an agreement early is that they want to fix that problem to get utilization up to return to profitability. How much more can NK offer, who knows…. I don’t fully grasp the fear the NC is putting out about the wage gap going into JCBA negotiations and that we’ll have to give up QOL for their wages. Many b6 pilots I’ve spoken with want many of our QOL rules…. Why would we concede anything in this environment?!

Vote YES, well, it’s a pure cash grab. Bird in the hand, we’d be temporarily paid more than many of our legacy counterparts. We’d have the possibility to snap up to b6 in TPA negotiations. My beef with the NCs take on that is they make it seem like it’s a certainty…. They point to Alaska and Virgin. Okay, one example…. There’s no guarantee that we’d get anything on the economic front in TPA negotiations, and if the merger falls through, management can now entice new hires with flexible 1st year pay…. This IS a concession regardless of how the NC spins it. It is a huge give to the company if we go into section 6 because if staffing isn’t a problem, what motivation would they have to negotiate in good faith?

These are the thoughts rolling through my head…

Judge Smails

There's so much wrong here, I don't even know where to start. I think you're conflating the JCBA (which neither group has an arbitration clause in their contracts, so that's not happening) and the SLI process, which is completely separate from the JCBA and will most likely be arbitrated. Know before you start spreading bad information.

Secondly, if you're looking at the pay bump in an SLI arbitration, no arbitrator is gonna look at that and say NK is at a disadvantage because we make too much. If anything, the exact opposite is true. If we go into SLI stuck with 2018 rates, that is a disadvantage. An arbitrator will look at our rates prior to merger close, not the rates that are the result of the merger when determining 'career expectations.'

Lakeaffect

I’ve copied and pasted these 2 statements that the NC put out that contradict each other. The First one is a month ago, addressed to us describing how the company can’t adequately staff our airline without market rates. The second one is part of the TA FAQ and states that Spirit can staff the airline just fine under our current pay. This is a big change in messaging and I’m definitely skeptical of the spin being put on this TA. Last month we had a lot of leverage, this month we don’t?

NOV 18 Fastread:

Spirit has aircraft on order and plans to increase aircraft utilization, which can only happen with adequate pilot staffing. The Company cannot continue to lose pilots at the rate it has been for months. The airline cannot generate profits or meet its projected growth without pilots. The only answer to attracting and retaining pilots is a market-based contract.

TA FAQ:

How is allowing the Company the flexibility to raise first year pay up to 98.5% of second year pay not giving up leverage? Isn’t it a concession?
To evaluate the leverage that we would retain if this provision was not included, we only need to look at the past year. Without raising first year rates, Spirit was able to hire and retain more than enough pilots to staff its growing fleet of aircraft. Higher first year pay rates are not sufficient to attract pilots.

Tranquility

Can’t edit my previous post, but after watching the most recent roadshow, Slotten did reference other instances other than Virgin/Alaska where economic gains were made in TPA negotiations. I’ll retract my previous criticism on that aspect of the NCs statements.

JulesWinfield

Yeah, something doesn't add up. Just because the company has been able to keep their head above water in 2022, doesn't mean they will going forward. Looking at the fleet plan, we are getting more aircraft this quarter than the previous 3 quarters combined. Next year, they are scheduled to get 33 more airplanes. This, combined with the fact that every regional pays more, and the legacies are all hiring close to 2000 pilots each, this strategy is untenable. If you read every quarterly filing, they all read the same: We would have made money if the aircraft utilization was higher.

CincoDeMayo

Covered at the roadshow I went to. They were able to cover this year, Paul said essentially “can they cover next year, that remains to be seen, can they offer signing bonuses or other incentives, that’s a possibility”.

So yeah, they did cover this year, next year, who knows, as we don’t know what the company might try to staff if needed. I see we inked another sweet flow program with a flight school

JulesWinfield

Unfortunately, I was working during the local and online roadshow. A new hire bonus does't fix their training backlog and OE issues. It would have to be a pretty substantial bonus to even get people to ink a contract to stay here.

CincoDeMayo

Good thing the company never makes bad decisions.

Wait…

Tranquility

If the company has been able to do pre-employment bonuses all along, why didn't they??

onedolla

And there’s the rub. We know, the company knows, that we still can get guys IN the door (what wet ink CFI wouldn’t jump at this chance), but we absolutely can’t keep them from leaving after a type rating all the way up to junior Captain. This TA helps a little to bring our horrible FO pay up a bit, but Slotten’s idea of incentivizing new hires if we turn this down would have already been done if Spirit had any hope it could work.

All Spirit was required to do was attend early openers. They didn’t have to agree to anything in a record 3 months. They didn’t make a mistake and offer us this “free cash” TA, and they’re certainly not teetering on the edge of bankruptcy giving us an offer at the same time. This was all calculated to get just enough votes before the other companies showed their (better) TAs. And now that JetBlue’s offer IS real, the whole blank check crap doesn’t fly either.