Normann

This chart is interesting. Can you give us the source? Also, I would like to see it next to the yield chart if there is one.

ovrtake92

That chart is a great illustration of why many of us choose to work at Spirit over a Legacy. It's easy to see, while times are good, the big money and stability of the big guys. However, it gives me a warm fuzzy feeling that Spirit can keep the profits even when things go sour again. Less susceptible to the vicious cycle that is aviation and I'm confident Ive made the right choice knowing full well that I could just as easily go to a legacy as anyone. Now if the next contract is a turd, then I'll be off like a prom dress to greener pastures. And also, X2 on how the hell does Southwest do it???

Normann

I agree. Staying here vs leaving for a major boils down to a choice between relatively higher stability vs compensation. The older you are the more you will lean toward stability. Of course it also boils down to whether you get the call or not.

Spirit operates in an undeserved market segment. Many domestic markets still don't offer low cost fares. Add to that, due to the income pyramid, our market segment is the largest to begin with. It is no wonder every new route fills up instantly. There are no guarantees but as far as stability we are looking pretty good.

I think the largest obstacle in the way of our growth will be infrastructure. Nobody wants to give us gates for the prices we can pay in any of our hubs. I think this is why Ben was not all that happy about low fuel prices when he was talking about "capacity discipline". I feel he was banking on a coming economic slowdown, followed by the usual capacity cuts, which in turn could free up gate space in our hubs. I believe a good chunk of the overlap in service created by M&A is still there. But as long everybody is making money nobody is in a rush to park old equipment. I have no idea where we will put all this growth in 2015. IAH had some announcements and we all heard rumors about FLL, MIA but those are unlikely. I duuunnnooo... It will be interesting to see what happens this year.

SG1159

Yep- some of my comments were out of line- no excuses, and I apologize.

Enjoy those days off.

ManFlex

I hope not either, but it is a real possibility. Waiting for that eventuality would put you in the middle of the legacy hiring wave versus the beginning if you left now. The next contract will bring improvements, but so will future legacy contracts. These things ebb and flow.

JoeyMeatballs

^ meh, IMO we would sooner have a strike vote or people leaving daily if this contract takes 5 years. There is absolutely no reason it can't be done in under 2

NedsKid

Go to the Spirit.com site, go down to 'investor relations', view the most recent presentation (link)

I don't know how to add all the fancy links, but, if you go to page 11 of that presentation, you'll see a chart titled

"Chasing Spirit is a Money Losing Proposition"
Spirit’s total revenue per passenger is below the competition’s break-even cost

BTW, 'the competition' is Southwest, Alaska, Allegiant, and jetBlue.

I just hope our management remembers that when we're talking about our new contact. Southwest has industry leading:

• scope
• Min Day/Average Daily Guarantee
• Medical

Southwest's pay rates aren't far off from industry leading either.

Alaska has industry leading Training Pay.

jetBlue and Allegiant don't lead the industry in anything, but, other than our 4 days off and TX conflict, neither do we.

We all need to recognize we work for an ULTRA low cost carrier, and that our company needs to undercut the competition in order to win business (I wish we could compete on customer service, but I'm not kidding myself). That said, management needs to recognize us, the pilots, as a valuable asset on the team, not a line item on the expense report. Page 5 of that same presentation has 4 bullet points, one of them being:

Keep a low cost mindset
• Continual pressure to eliminate and reduce costs or get someone else to pay for it
• Unit cost targets communicated company-wide
• Bonus program is directly linked to achieving unit cost targets

This is what they tell Wall Street they do.

I see the pressure part, but I don't see unit cost targets ever communicated to me, and I can sure as heck tell you I have never seen a bonus from all the targets I helped to achieve.

This company has the most aggressive single-engine taxi and save fuel culture I have ever seen, and I, as the pilot, am the one who implements it. An airline's largest single expense is fuel. I have my hand on that spigot, and I do what I can to not waste it (as do 95% of the rest of my group). I don't need a bonus, but I do need to see a piece of the action. Since our unit cost targets seem to be achieved, I'd like to see it reflected in our next CBA.

Normann

Fair enough. Peace.

Hugedouche

For the guy asking about the yield chart, that chart really doesn't matter, at the end of the day the game is all based on ROIC. To have a greater ROIC we are going to have cost in line moving forward.

Also, this contract will be done in less than 1 year if it isn't then negotiators need to be displaced. They are already in informal talks with the company and things "seem" to be going very well. Also given that Bendo said not more than 20 days ago that he want a contact done in 6 hours means they are willing to play ball.

Feel free to call your negotiating team and ask them how things are going right now, some of you might be surprised that the BB's actually want to run an airline for the foreseeable future.

One more thing, If we got Jetblue + ?% and a direct 401k contribution, real LTD and a bunch of other things that we all want, our operating margin would fluctuate by roughly a 1/2% thus our ROIC would remain high and so would our stock price, and that is exactly what the B's need!!!

Normann

Thanks for the post. That link worked. Lots of info in that presentation. The one thing that caught me eye is on page 6 SW's CASM is 9% higher than ours. But on page 11 it seems their break even point is approximately 18% higher (hard to read). There seems to be a discrepancy. I guess CASM does not correlate to total cost? I don't know. Then on page 8 we show 40% lower average price compared to SW. I thought we are about 30% lower not 40%. News to me but I like it. That is roughly $40 per person per leg. A typical US family of 4 will save $320 on a round trip on us. No wonder I see many parents with children on our planes. May be this is why we have not seen a sexually explicit advertisement for a while now.

What is crazy is that we have a very small fleet with a very inefficient network. Inefficient in terms of frequency of flights between stations. Yet we already have these figures. What will happen when they God forbid start to run an efficient airline? What will the margins be in that case?

Another interesting chart is on page 5. I have been looking for that number for a while now. So vs JB we fly the planes about 7% more, and about 17% more vs SW.

Based on numbers from apc:

Jetblue has 3000 pilots with 200 airplanes. 15 pilots per plane.
Southwest has 6830 pilots with 565 airplanes. 12.1 pilots per plane.

Historical numbers from my old excel file show an average of 14.8 pilots per plane at Spirit for 2013. But that was before red/green arbitration. It is hard to tell where we stand since we are overstaffed at the moment. I think the current is 18 per plane (?) but that will not hold. I am guessing our new ratio will be somewhere around 15.5-16.5. If you take into account that we fly the planes 7% more, than we are very close to JB levels. JB has pref bid and not very many rules besides 117. So are we that inefficient as a pilot group with our current CBA?

However compared to SW we are way fat on pilots. But SW has a very efficient system with multiple connects. As a result guys fly many legs per day and credit high per day. On the other hand they also have a very good contract and good QOL. Aren't they line bidding?

So what is it? Why are we Spirit pilots not productive? I am sick of hearing this in recurrent from our guest speakers. Is it our CBA or is our route structure and lack of frequencies that makes us unproductive? Does it say in our contract that we can't fly more than 18h 4 day trips?

It will be only a matter of time before we will have multiple connects, and 4-5 legs a day as a norm. It has already started. So let us not be walked to school by management. We are not unproductive. The current network is.