Spirit Airlines pilots walk off the job.

Spirit airlines pilots have walked off the job effective 5am this morning (ET). The union and the management team agreed to extend negotiations past the original midnight deadline until 5am, but shortly after that the pilots union has released the following press release.

ALPA News Release

As of right now, Fort Lauderdale International Airport website is reporting all Spirit flights as cancelled.

Last night's flight to Santiago and back was cancelled proactively by Spirit, as they cancelled several flights yesterday evening. As far as the DR is concerned there are flights that will be affected today.

Flight 715 FLL-SDQ
Flight 716 SDQ-FLL
Flight 783 FLL-PUJ
Flight 784 PUJ-FLL
Flight 717 FLL-SDQ
Flight 718 SDQ-FLL
Flight 633 FLL-STI


Too bad, I think this is the beginning of the end for Spirit. Death by Union.

In the past 2 weeks, Spirit Airlines approached nearly every charter operation in the US to fly some or all of their routes in the event of the strike. Vision Airlines was going to do it then backed out for the personal safety and welfare of their pilots. (The pilots who would have operated these vision airlines flights for spirit would be blacklisted by the union as SCABS and would be certain to never be able to work again in this country as a pilot on almost any airline. AirTran (which has a huge charter operation) turned them down. As did Miami Air. Falcon Air did one flight for them on Saturday. (FLL-San Salvador Bahamas and back), which is Spirit's most profitable route. (They have an agreement with Club Med there). Falcon air has now backed out of doing more charter flights for Spirit as almost all their pilots have called in sick, refusing to work the flights and risk being on a union's list of SCABS.
The two pilots who flew the Satuday flight have now been blacklisted.

Terminal 4 at Fort Lauderdale airport resembles a refugee camp. (even more than usual). Media have been reporting that Spirit will refund tickets eventually, but the Spirit website says that you can get a credit for future travel in the value of your ticket plus $100 OR a refund. Spirit displaced 18000+ passengers on Saturday alone. Even if say for example the average fare is around $200, Spirit would have to put out $3.6 MILLION in refunds for Saturday alone. Now take today, and Monday, and Tuesday...

This is not a public comany. It is owned by two private equity funds. Indigo Partners, and Oaktree Capital management. Their goal is to create and invest in only profitable companies. If the pilots demands prevent their project from being profitable, the investors will simply close up shop and move on. My guess is that will be sooner rather than later as the pilots nor management will budge.

The only way I can see Spirit surviving is if the airline agrees to all the pilots terms, then charges a $5 Pilot Appeasement Fee or impose a mandatory pilot gratuity of $3 per passenger per segment. (145 passengers in the A319= $435 split between the 2 pilots = $217.5 for that flight on top of their current pay. That should satisfy them). With a $25-$45 fee for a carry-on bag, does this really sound so far fetched?

pedrochemical said:

What are the pilots' demands?
Why will the management not budge?

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They want to be paid the same amount of money that senior captians and first officers at airlines like AA, United, and Delta make. You know, the airlines that are losing millions of dollars a day even when operating a full capacity because their labor costs are so high.


Management will not budge because the key to Spirit's sucess is to have the lowest operating costs of any airline in the US. They fill planes to maximum capacity at very low fares and make money on fees for optional services. Spirit was modestly profitable in 2009 and doing even better in 2010 up until this point. Indeed, Spirit was one of the most profitable commercial airlines in the US until 2 days ago.

Spirit issued a press release today decribing in detail the offer that they made to the union just before the strike and the union rejected it as not being enough.

Spirit Airlines - cheap tickets, cheap flights, discount airfare, cheap hotels, cheap car rentals, cheap travel

I pulled this from a pilot's forum. To put into perspective pay for pilots. In case you didn't know pilots (and flight attendants) are paid an hourly rate with a guaranteed minimum hours per month. They do not begin getting paid, however, until the door closes at the gate prior to pushback and stop getting paid as soon as the door opens at their destination.

Based off the top of the pay scale (12 years) take a look at this. (Hourly wage)

Spirit Capt A321- $152 A319- $138 Spirit first officer A321-$79 A319-$71

Southwest Capt $206
Soluthwest F/O $144

Delta 744/777 CAPT $209
Delta 744/777 F/O $143

Delta A319/320 CAPT $162
Delta A319/320 F/O $110

AA 777 CAPT $205
AA 777 F/O $139

Continental WIDE CAPT $193
Continental WIDE F/O $132

UA 744/777 CAPT $190
UA 744/777 F/O $130

USAirways A330 CAPT $160
US Airways A330 F/O $109

AirTran CAPT $153
AirTran F/O $79

I bet Jetblue is absolutely salivating at the idea of picking at the carcass of Spirit Airlines and buying up all their routes, taking over all their gate space, and acquiring some of all of their aircraft and refit them with all the things that make JetBlue great. (JetBlue uses the same family of aircraft so they would integrate well)That would make FLL as big of a hub for JetBlue as JFK and would make it their gateway for a massive expansion into Latin America.

shawn27 said:

I leave for Santo Domingo Friday out of Jetblue, I know I may get blasted for this but pilots had been warning for some time now that they were going to strike... passengers should've known this.

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I completely agree. They are required to give a 30 day notice before any strike which they did, and it was well publicized. It just goes to show you just how many clueless people there are out there. If the passengers have travel insurance, the insurance will only pay if the tickets were bought before the 30 day notice was given.

OTOH, Spirit acted like everything was fine and operating under normal policies until the very last second. As late as Friday night, people wishing to cancel and move their travel plans were told that that there were no special policies in place for changing plans around the strike date and if they wanted to change, they would have to pay the normal penalty of $110.

Still, things are getting really bad at FLL and MCO. There are people who are camped out in the terminal since FRIDAY. Many are from Puerto Rico, Jamaica, Colombia, and yes the DR, who have run out of money and have no cash to buy another ticket home, no money for the expensive hotels in the FLL area, and some not even money for food at the airport restaurants. Local news outlets are really reporting on this big time and people are bringing plates of food to the airport for these people.

Spirit has made no attempt to reach out to the pilots and restart negotiations. In fact, they have already proactivley canceled all flights for Wednesday, despite bleeding millions of dollars in cash for every day there are no operations. Instead, Spirit is trying to fight a propaganda war by saying what a good offer they gave the the pilots and they turned it down, and hoping that the public turns on them, and the 1500 other employees, most of whom are now laid off without pay will turn on them, and then the pilots will break and go back to work.

Yes, the investors will bankrupt this airline and close up shop before giving the pilots what they want.

Management at Spirit caved. They believed right up until Saturday that they could get charter airlines to fly for them during any strike. Every airline turned them down but one shady operation, and the pilots of that airline stopped that from happening by all calling in sick. Spirit was caught off guard by this.

And now offering Strikingly low fares. Talk about a classy operation, huh? Imagine if they actually did get other charter airlines to take on their flights during the strike. They would probably throw it in the face of the pilots by throwing a sale offering S.C.A.B fares, and make up some silly acronym for that.


Talk about a HUGE public relations mess, though. Plus, the fee for carry-on bags is still on for August 1.