SW places firm order for 150 737 Max, announced this morning (12-13-2011)

[SWA Bubba]

Seems to me You nailed it. I don't get why some SWA folks don't seem to understand that it makes total sense if a F9 pilot would rather continue flying an Airbus in DEN rather than commute to a SWA base and perhaps never get back to DEN. Just because SWA currently has a higher pay rate doesn't mean they are a "better" job. For many, living were you want and doing the kind of flying you want far surpasses a higher wage. You would think the SWA pilots of anyone would understand someone wanting to make their own airline successful in the future. F9 could easily be going great a few years from now. If they get an owner who can realize it's potential the F9 guys will be very happy they didn't get dissolved and stapled to the bottom of SWA.
The SWA folks on here don't seem to understand that there is a lot more to life than flying for SWA. That's not a slam on SWA it's fine if someone wants to work there, but thinking everyone else should is a little narcissistic.

To be fair, during the hours' worth of negotiation, SWA offered three of the four things Frontier wanted: Pay protection, furlough protection, and domicile protection. The only one of the four not offered was seat protection. That means none of the Frontier guys would have had to commute back to Denver. They would have kept their base positions.

Also importantly, none of them would have gotten furloughed. None. Gary gave his word on that, and I'd go out on a limb and say that GK's word is worth a lot more than BB's word. Ask the Midwest Express pilots what they think of that. However, Frontier's negotiating committee went back and put out that word that SWA would have "furloughed the bottom 20% of F9," and was hailed as a hero for 'saving' the junior pilots. Patently false.

Regardless, they turned it down and ended up with Republic. That was their choice. As Dan mentioned, they didn't want to fly for SWA. Good for them, and good luck to them. I sincerely hope things work out for them, regardless of the SWA-Frontier acquisition failure.

Bubba

 

[USMC319]

Bubba,
Maybe Gary should have upped the ante and won the bid then. You well know that the frontier pilots had nothing to do with it. Personally, I was hoping that SWA would have beat out RAH. But they didn't. That's just the cold hard facts of the case, now...back to fantasy land we go.

 

[madjack]

Maybe SWA got a good look at the books and decided not to up the ante...

 

[USMC319]

Maybe SWA got a good look at the books and decided not to up the ante...

Well there you have it. Finally we can pin the whole thing on the bean counters. It wasn't the F9 pilots' fault after all. Thanks for cracking the case madjack.

Back to the topic of this thread, Frontier has a firm order for 60 Airbus A-320 NEOs and 20 A-319 NEOs and 40 Bombardier C-series 300s and 40 options. I hope we take delivery of all of them and I hope they are all for growth. I hope WN takes delivery of all their orders and that they are for growth as well. See, we don't have to wish ill on each other.

 

[SWA Bubba]

Bubba,
Maybe Gary should have upped the ante and won the bid then. You well know that the frontier pilots had nothing to do with it. Personally, I was hoping that SWA would have beat out RAH. But they didn't. That's just the cold hard facts of the case, now...back to fantasy land we go.

At that point, 'upping the ante' wouldn't have made any difference. GK's offer always had the stipulation that the deal (any amount of money) would still require pilot union agreement prior to consummation. Enter the short but failed negotiation between SWAPA & FAPA. At that point, it was all over but the handwringing. For better or worse, GK keeps his word, and had essentially painted himself into a corner: no pilot deal, no overall deal.

The court wanted him to remove that stipulation, and RAH proffered a higher bid in case he did. But since he wouldn't, no amount of SWA bid would have mattered. Keep in mind the short time period the auction lasted. How much higher he would have gone had there actually been a pilot agreement is pure speculation; however, he did say he was in the auction to win. Who knows?

Like I said, GK honors his word regardless, and as a result, he made no such stipulation in his Airtran acquisition. To avoid a similar situation, I'd imagine. Ergo, the position that ALL of us are in today.

I'm not wishing bad on anyone; I hope 2012 brings career improvements to ALL of us.

Bubba

 

[Snapshot]

Did they order the sunroof from the factory or are they sticking with the aftermarket option?

 

[Steeler Fan]

Go Steelers!

 

[scoreboardII]

Did they order the sunroof from the factory or are they sticking with the aftermarket option?

Nope, they ordered the version which will put your company in Ch 7.

 

[Snapshot]

Yawn. Have fun with that.

 

[vixin]

Hey snapper who is it you fly for?