Spirit Stops Hiring

DavidWhite said:
FedEx is now offering an “expedited interview” to PSA Airlines with guaranteed flow to American!
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They are far better off applying to any of the majors directly, than getting stuck in the Regional Circus.
if they had the resume and skills to get on the line at FedEx, someone like United, Atlas, JetBlue, etc would scoop them up fast.
 
FlyingElvii said:
They are far better off applying to any of the majors directly, than getting stuck in the Regional Circus.
if they had the resume and skills to get on the line at FedEx, someone like United, Atlas, JetBlue, etc would scoop them up fast.
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I think they know that as well, if anything its a slap in the face to all the people that have worked so hard to get there.
 
Albany Tom said:
Somewhere I heard a rumor that the discount airlines are actually a really sneaky plot to completely eliminate the threat of terrorist attack. The theory being that the passengers end up being so angry, so wound up from the experience that if they detected even a possible terrorist, they would use it as an excuse to tear that person limb from limb and stuff the resultant parts into the possibly functioning toilet. Hey, with a regional this may have happened already, and just not have been reported. :)

Just humor, but I think this one would be labeled "plausible".
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Thought you were going to say that the experience on Spirit is so bad even a terrorist would be appalled and wouldn't fly on it.

Our club had a guest speaker, a former club CFI hour builder who now flies for Spirit. I wish him the best of luck. Obviously a club meeting is not a place to ask him "So, your stock has cratered, you're in limbo between being taken over and the Justice Dept suing to stop it, you're losing a ton of money this year, and you now have a hiring freeze - back up plan? ".

He flies a nice A 320, and talked a lot about the automation, etc. But it's a job, and need to think about the situation the employer is in and what might happen 3 to 5 years out.

My current CFI just turned down a job offer from Frontier. I think she's a bit wiser than others.
 
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dmspilot said:
They were until competition from Amazon ate away at their business. They've been struggling for awhile.


No idea, almost seems like a joke.
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Amazon is not the problem. Slowing economy has caused volume to decrease at all 3 carriers. This comes after all 3 we’re hiring like mad during Covid so now FedEx and UPS are fat in pilots.

UPS offered an early out to the senior guys. FedEx is encouraging guys to go to PSA and may well exercise the clause in their contract where they lower the monthly pay guarantee.

Certainly wouldn’t characterize either as “struggling”, they both make money like they’re printing it. The pendulum always swings both ways. All in all glad I’m on the cargo side.
 
Busflyer said:
Amazon is not the problem. Slowing economy has caused volume to decrease at all 3 carriers. This comes after all 3 we’re hiring like mad during Covid so now FedEx and UPS are fat in pilots.

UPS offered an early out to the senior guys. FedEx is encouraging guys to go to PSA and may well exercise the clause in their contract where they lower the monthly pay guarantee.

Certainly wouldn’t characterize either as “struggling”, they both make money like they’re printing it. The pendulum always swings both ways. All in all glad I’m on the cargo side.
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The problems at the big cargo carriers started before the economy began slowing.
 
dmspilot said:
The problems at the big cargo carriers started before the economy began slowin
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Both FedEx and UPS quit hiring this year. Pretty sure that was after the high inflation and slowing economy began. UPS earned $1.3 billion in the 3rd quarter while FedEx was around $800 million. Both are still making profits, just less than before.
 
midwestpa24 said:
I have also seen in the last 24 hours FedEx is advising their pilots to expect minimum schedules for the foreseeable future, and encouraging them to apply at PSA via a crossover program they have setup. Is the pilot shortage coming to an end?
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All the Cargo airlines over expanded during covid. When the passenger airlines essentially shut down belly freight which is 50% of the freight capacity worldwide went away overnight. The cargo companies raked in the money. When passenger travel and hence belly freight roared back with a vengeance the cargo companies overnight found themselves with way to much capacity.
 
Man, their stock sure took a dive when that article came out. Buy! Buy! Buy! ;)
 
Ed Haywood said:
Ethiopian Air from Djibouti to Yemen
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My experiences with Ethiopian have been good. Kenya Air tried to kill and a whole 737 load of others, but other than that, they were OK.

Gruppe TACA, now Avianca, has been my worse. Tegucigalpa to San Jose, the entire safety brief was the FA holding up the demo seatbelt and inserting and opening the buckle. NOT A WORD WAS SAID> Over half the people did not have their seatbelt on for taxi and take off and landing.
 
1980, Trans-American from Los Angeles to Chicago
 
dmspilot said:
They were until competition from Amazon ate away at their business. They've been struggling for awhile.


No idea, almost seems like a joke.
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The current surplus of pilots at UPS and FedEx has nothing to do with Amazon. 50% of all airfreight is belly freight on passenger airlines. When covid hit and passenger airlines quit flying there was an overnight massive capacity loss. UPS and FedEx flew everything they could and hired pilots. Th expectation was the passenger airlines would take 5 years or more to recover. Instead they roared back almost overnight and with it came back all the belly freight. Now you had an instant world wide airfreight surplus. Shipping rates by air dropped quickly. It will sort itself out in a year or two.
 
Check out this video regarding Spirit Airlines. Seems like they spent a lot of money on pilot salaries and they are just not making enough revenue.
 
WDD said:
And since it was Spirit Airlines, boy were those passengers surprised when they landed!
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Otoh - they might have been happy just to land and get off the plane
 
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Then there was the flight on Air Crimea. It wasn't the patched bullet holes that bothered me. It was the holes that hadn't been patched. :D
 
So is there a published or anecdotal number of small caliber holes that can be in an airliner before it can't maintain pressurization? My guess is that it's a lot, and that a lot of airplanes leak like a sieve, but that's just a guess.

I'm just picturing a pre-flight at an airline operating out of South America, or Baltimore, counting holes and saying "only 23, we're good to go!"
 
Pinecone said:
My experiences with Ethiopian have been good. Kenya Air tried to kill and a whole 737 load of others, but other than that, they were OK.

Gruppe TACA, now Avianca, has been my worse. Tegucigalpa to San Jose, the entire safety brief was the FA holding up the demo seatbelt and inserting and opening the buckle. NOT A WORD WAS SAID> Over half the people did not have their seatbelt on for taxi and take off and landing.
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Does the seatbelt really matter? If an airliner crashes, maybe they want to be "thrown clear"?
 
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