Spirit pilots agree to end strike

Okay, how much more did you gain over the previous offer on the table (before you went out)? Bet you lost more, bottom line, than you gained. Don't worry about those of us inconvenienced by your little game while you took time off. Now that you're back, I won't be, let's see how that works for you.

"Little game...while they took time off"??
You have no idea what the pilots of Spirit (or any airline pilot) put on the line when they choose to resort to self help.
Pilots don't bring unions on the property and they don't cause strikes....Management does!

Dear Frank. So the pilots were being raped and plundered by their employer and all you have to worry about is how you may have been inconvenienced? These guys get inconvenienced every payday when they can't make ends meet. Do you know what it takes, in experience and cost, to get to where they are? Do you really think they lost more than what they gained by staying out? What is the value of dignity and self-worth? What about the future pilots at that airline? They did it to keep that career respectable. If you want to complain, cry about what you pay in commission to your uneducated realtor or some other unskilled but overpaid recipient of your dollars. You want cheap fares that are below the actual cost and are unwilling to pay fair market for it, yet I see you standing in line to buy a $4 cup of coffee at the airport and not saying a word about it. A real Einstein, I see. By the way, I don't think the folks at Spirit care if you never fly them again. The seats will be filled by someone pissed off at some other airline that day. Buh-bye!

Frank...what a disgusting, self centered pig. Sadly, you are atypical of what floats around this country nowadays.

It is not all about YOU...or your pathetic little world (el cheapo) it IS about decent middle class jobs that have been pushed to the bottom of society where SKILLED people like pilots, Flight Attendnats, Mechanics qualify for welfare so that their ghoulish management can make millions in bonuses, and cheap customers can pay near nothing to fly.

Take Greyhound...next time, where you belong. You and your kind won't be missed.

am I on FI?

We have too many self-centered, greedy, narrow-minded, penny-pinching people in North America who care nothing about the living needs of others. Indeed, the management class as a whole seem to have taken greed and narrow-mindedness to a whole new level... all the while doing mediocre jobs and convincing Boards that they are worth mega-millions.

As long as those people can have their way, they SEEM to be worth the money. But they invariably push average and skilled people to the brink and then have to deal with the consequences - which cost many more millions in losses and lost good will, without the skills to deal with the unrest.

Hopefully this "entitled" and "mediocre" cycle will soon end with shareholders taking their Boards and Chairman by the throats, shaking them vigorously, and imposing salary caps of half a million (or less) on any employee in the firm - including the Chairman and the Board.

NOBODY is worth more than half a mil... what happened to the days of "you're not indispensable"??

For every CEO out there making a mil or more there are ten or twenty (or more) experienced, qualified and competent business grads willing to step into their shoes.

There SHOULD be another revolution coming. I hope for the day when no management employee or Board Member can point to an industry trend and demand he/she be paid obscene amounts of money.

And shareholders should seriously realise that those mega-millions in remuneration and share options going to management (who they think are the ONLY individuals who can do the job) come out of their own wallets - the annual dividends and share values...

Good for them! Glad the pilots fought this one. It's about time CEO stop getting all the $; they need to share w/its employees. I hope SPIRIT FAs get some guts!

Frank, spirit pilots do not want customers like you. Go fly some other airline. You have no idea about the pilot job and what these guys and girls have gone through. Its not a little game, it's the life and jobs.

Hey All You Ignorant Fools!
To all those who say that they'll boycott Spirit because the employees were unified and fought for what the felt they needed; wait until Spirit is the least expensive option for you, you will be there paying Wal-Mart prices and expexting Nordstom Service. SHAME ON YOU AND YOUR IGNORANCE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Rock on Spirit!

1) The declaration that any ol' contemporary biz' school grad' can emerge from the halls of Harvard on Fri' and preside over an airline -- or even a sidewalk hotdog stand, for that matter -- on the following Mon' is stupid.

2) I don't know about Baldanza, but I myself have served in union labor capacities and in non-union mgmt leadership capacities; I've also owned & operated my own on-call air charter service and have worn more hats in this biz' than most folks can count with both hands & feet. The insinuation
that ONLY MGMT is ever at fault when businesses flail or when labor relations sour is atrociously ignorant, as is the claim that mgmt ALONE is rife with greed nowadays. The jealousy rampant above is SO telling.....

3) It's a sad fact of life, as I happen to know FIRSTHAND more often than most of you can count, that far too many human beings insist upon Cadillac service at Yugo prices, whether it be w/in the aviation realm or wherever else. It's disgusting that so many folks believe it to be their Divine "right" to be butt-kissed by airlines whilst paying so abhorrently little for good service (when in fact the service is actually good, that is) & it is almost criminal that looney-lefty socialist gov'ts like ours and those in Europe are constantly badgering airlines with fees & taxes & "green weenie" regulations which paint us as eco'-pariahs and result in ours being the most regulated of all "deregulated" industries on the planet.

However, portraying ALL unionists everywhere as Robin Hoods and ALL corporates everywhere as the anti-Christ is not only dishonest & largely inaccurate but also is counterproductive. The REAL "enemies" are big gov't
and big greed --- on EVERYONE's part, i.e. mgmt, labor & its clientele.

4) bimjim, you say that "Nobody is worth half a million". Does that also include the cardiosurgical team which saved my young son's life last year?
Who are YOU to put a price on THAT? Does that include the hospital CEO who recruited that team to his hospital in the first place? Who are YOU, or who am I, or who is ANY amongst us, to dictate salaries?

Salaries of $10M per annum to a CEO are repulsive, yes, AS ARE salaries of most union bosses and salaries of even MORE money to your very own favorite talentless late-nite TV host or neo-lib' Hollywood movie actor/actress OR braindead pro' sports athlete. Be consistent, please.

Then again, only fascists and the current US Fed' gov't are in the business
of telling others what they're now "allowed" to be paid. There ARE other ways & means of reigning in these "excessive" salaries, komrades. It's en vogue now, thanks to our rancid media, to bash anyone earning any more than what millionaire Michael Moore thinks is "fair", for example, but you had better beware of going too far down that darkside path. Something tells me that NONE of you, myself included, would know how to get back.

Congratulations to the guys & girls at Spirit who took a stand and demanded a share of the wealth! Now what are you going to do for the F/A's, reservationists and ground workers that are equally underpaid? I have never flown Spirit because they don't fly to MKE but I am a big fan! Don't let management do yo you what they did to Midwest which was outsourcing every part of the airline untill known of the original employees were left.

Wow, how short sighted, did you miss economics 101. Without "The Franks" and the rest of us you don't have a job. Maybe you are more suited to corporate aviation, oh that right they would not put up with that kind of attitude either, maybe a career change is in order.

Cool see ya Frank!!! I think we should make a website... Spiritairlinetravellers.com. I'm sure it would rank right up there with walmartpeople.com. And remember, the price of fuel is the price of fuel, and the price of labor is the price of labor.

4) bimjim, you say that "Nobody is worth half a million". Does that also include the cardiosurgical team which saved my young son's life last year? Who are YOU to put a price on THAT? Does that include the hospital CEO who recruited that team to his hospital in the first place? Who are YOU, or who am I, or who is ANY amongst us, to dictate salaries?

--

So we move on from airline CEOs to doctors and surgeons? I take your challenge...

Yes, I am willing to target surgeons as well... this is a group who have little or no regard for any person's other life, scheduling everyone at their convenience and tghen making them wait even more in the "waiting room" - no wonder we are called "patients". And we had better have a great deal of that quality when it comes to the medical profession. When your family member entered that institution it was a 50-50 chance your surgeon could have come to you with the news you did NOT want to hear - or did you not also realise that they call their professional skills a "practice" for a very good reason?

Come on, now... a million bucks a year is over 83,000 a month, or more than 19,000 bucks a week, or almost 3,000 dollars a day. On such a salary a person could buy a new car every week, a new house every couple of months - ad infinitum. Even with a free-spending wife, a very comfortable retirement could be saved in just a few years of practice - the rest is gravy.

As to whether they are worth it, OK, maybe a million a year. But more than that is simply ripping the patients, the hospital and the government off in sheer greed.

Mark my words, one of these days people will start asking WHY any company has to pay these obscene amounts in salaries, WHY one person at $10M has to be employed over another with the same qualifications and experience at $1M, WHY the company they invest in HAS to make 25% more profit this year over last year - even though they are already at full efficient output capacity.

This is a twist in the thread, but I promise you they are related. At some point in time we have to recognise that the resources of the earth are finite and we will have to take unpopular decisions in order not to provide a bleak, blank, black, dead, used-up world for our descendants.

Less is truly more. And I thank God I will not be around when this greedy world finally collapses in on itself.

As "Pogo" once so truthfully said in the cartoon... "I have seen the enemy, and he is us!"