Foreign DEC

[co-joe]

...
Even being a Captain at Flair has abysmal rates. Outright embarrassing. If I was an industry manager, I'd be expanding all over the world too knowing Canada is the international gold standard for pilot sweat shops

...

Flair pays more than Swoop, Lynx, Jetlines, Jazz, and Encore. If you look at the upgrade potential and how that factors into the money you will actually have a shot at making, they pay more than most other options in Canada. If you're over 40, in many cases, Flair's current pay scale represents the most money you can make in Canada in your remaining usable years. The new pay scale will bridge that gap. AC will always represent a higher income potential if you are young enough to take advantage of it, but it will never compare in lifestyle IMHO.

Flair doesn't have a recruiting problem. It has a retention problem. What is the churn at Air Canada, less than 1%? What about WestJet? Even with the chaos, are they losing 5%? Sunwing, Transit?? 5% maybe? Less?

Flair is losing over 20% of their pilots in their first year. Management was quite mum about the number of people leaving between 12-24 months. I'm guessing that this is also around 20%. Flair's employee turnover has to be 5-10X higher than any other major airline. Why is that? It has become so bad that the keeper of the seniority list won't number it any longer. If you count down the list, it's only about 12 longer than it was this time last year. For every course of 16 that we hire, the seniority list grows by 1 person. There's your problem. It's retention, not scarcity.

I don't think your numbers are at all representative of what Flair's position will be moving forward. During the pandemic, Flair was the only airline on planet earth that was actively hiring pilots. We hired at least 25 pilots who were on active furlough from jobs that paid substantially more than us. Those people were rentals, nothing more. They were never going to stay no matter what we paid them. There were at least another dozen who had already done interviews for jobs that paid more and were just biding their time till the better offer came down. Then there were the expats who were just waiting for their call back to make 30k a month in the sandbox.

I think your numbers were drastically scewed by rental pilots who were never going to stay at flair no matter what happened once their jobs came back. The reality moving forward will depend largely on the new CBA, and what happens when China comes back to life.

[Canadaflyer46]

...
Even being a Captain at Flair has abysmal rates. Outright embarrassing. If I was an industry manager, I'd be expanding all over the world too knowing Canada is the international gold standard for pilot sweat shops

...

Flair pays more than Swoop, Lynx, Jetlines, Jazz, and Encore. If you look at the upgrade potential and how that factors into the money you will actually have a shot at making, they pay more than most other options in Canada. If you're over 40, in many cases, Flair's current pay scale represents the most money you can make in Canada in your remaining usable years. The new pay scale will bridge that gap. AC will always represent a higher income potential if you are young enough to take advantage of it, but it will never compare in lifestyle IMHO.

Flair doesn't have a recruiting problem. It has a retention problem. What is the churn at Air Canada, less than 1%? What about WestJet? Even with the chaos, are they losing 5%? Sunwing, Transit?? 5% maybe? Less?

Flair is losing over 20% of their pilots in their first year. Management was quite mum about the number of people leaving between 12-24 months. I'm guessing that this is also around 20%. Flair's employee turnover has to be 5-10X higher than any other major airline. Why is that? It has become so bad that the keeper of the seniority list won't number it any longer. If you count down the list, it's only about 12 longer than it was this time last year. For every course of 16 that we hire, the seniority list grows by 1 person. There's your problem. It's retention, not scarcity.

I don't think your numbers are at all representative of what Flair's position will be moving forward. During the pandemic, Flair was the only airline on planet earth that was actively hiring pilots. We hired at least 25 pilots who were on active furlough from jobs that paid substantially more than us. Those people were rentals, nothing more. They were never going to stay no matter what we paid them. There were at least another dozen who had already done interviews for jobs that paid more and were just biding their time till the better offer came down. Then there were the expats who were just waiting for their call back to make 30k a month in the sandbox.

I think your numbers were drastically scewed by rental pilots who were never going to stay at flair no matter what happened once their jobs came back. The reality moving forward will depend largely on the new CBA, and what happens when China comes back to life.

Hate to break this to you but Jazz and Encore are regionals flying Dash 8s, and Jetlines has 1 plane. So you're really having to scrape the barrel for comparisons in how substandard the pay is at Flair. I honestly don't know how you're not furious at their plan to ship pilots in from the other side of the world just to keep the payscales so low.

[daedalusx]

I honestly don't know how you're not furious at their plan to ship pilots in from the other side of the world just to keep the payscales so low.

He got his 30 pieces of silver. Why would he be furious?

[Joe Blow Schmo]

In case you missed it we are involved in contract negotiations to do exactly that. Regardless of the pay stealing pilots from other companies is a bandaid solution and moves the problem to another carrier and does little to address the underlying issue of not enough experienced 705 pilots in Canada to support the growth currently occurring.

Perhaps a recession will come along and temporarily fix that problem but Flair is not going to wait to see what happens. We'd prefer to address it by becoming a competitive career airline in Canada and at the same time increase the number of experienced pilots in the country as well as pursue outreach programs that involve getting more young Canadians to pursue an aviation career.

Immigrating a few pilots to Canada is not going to fix the issue at an industry level. It requires a multi-pronged approach and decades of work.

There are plenty of experienced Canadian 705 pilots overseas who would happily return to Canada for a decent salary. Of course they're currently making double or triple what you pay with a lower tax burden.

One can earn USD150K (CDN200K) flying a narrow body jet in India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Africa, etc. I'm sure you'll appreciate that if you want to attract experienced Canadian pilots you'll have to, at the very least, match the pay in the developing world.

[Arnie Pye]

...
Even being a Captain at Flair has abysmal rates. Outright embarrassing. If I was an industry manager, I'd be expanding all over the world too knowing Canada is the international gold standard for pilot sweat shops

...

Flair pays more than Swoop, Lynx, Jetlines, Jazz, and Encore. If you look at the upgrade potential and how that factors into the money you will actually have a shot at making, they pay more than most other options in Canada. If you're over 40, in many cases, Flair's current pay scale represents the most money you can make in Canada in your remaining usable years. The new pay scale will bridge that gap. AC will always represent a higher income potential if you are young enough to take advantage of it, but it will never compare in lifestyle IMHO.

Flair doesn't have a recruiting problem. It has a retention problem. What is the churn at Air Canada, less than 1%? What about WestJet? Even with the chaos, are they losing 5%? Sunwing, Transit?? 5% maybe? Less?

Flair is losing over 20% of their pilots in their first year. Management was quite mum about the number of people leaving between 12-24 months. I'm guessing that this is also around 20%. Flair's employee turnover has to be 5-10X higher than any other major airline. Why is that? It has become so bad that the keeper of the seniority list won't number it any longer. If you count down the list, it's only about 12 longer than it was this time last year. For every course of 16 that we hire, the seniority list grows by 1 person. There's your problem. It's retention, not scarcity.

I don't think your numbers are at all representative of what Flair's position will be moving forward. During the pandemic, Flair was the only airline on planet earth that was actively hiring pilots. We hired at least 25 pilots who were on active furlough from jobs that paid substantially more than us. Those people were rentals, nothing more. They were never going to stay no matter what we paid them. There were at least another dozen who had already done interviews for jobs that paid more and were just biding their time till the better offer came down. Then there were the expats who were just waiting for their call back to make 30k a month in the sandbox.

I think your numbers were drastically scewed by rental pilots who were never going to stay at flair no matter what happened once their jobs came back. The reality moving forward will depend largely on the new CBA, and what happens when China comes back to life.

Flair might pay more than Swoop. Lynx has an accelerator clause which will pay 10% more than Flair when the new contract comes out. Jetlines only has one airplane and isn't hiring. Jazz and Encore aren't a comparators as they are primarily domestic feeder routes with smaller aircraft.

Upgrade potential doesn't mean S#*% unless you're a 2000 hour pilot living in your mom's basement. Any of these companies will upgrade you once you meet Captain minimums.

If you're over 40, you'll still make way more money at Air Canada and Transat over the remaining 25 years of your career. Flair just had a couple of guys in their 50's head to AC from here and they only applied within the last couple of months. You won't make 777 Captain at AC but you'll retire mid-seniority narrow body captain.
You might not make more money at Westjet with a long upgrade time.
I don't have enough time and energy to run the numbers right now but here are some basic AC numbers:
Air Canada is 3.5 years to upgrade where you'll earn a base salary of about $185k [actually, I think it is higher since you carry years of service and enter as a year 3 captain??] plus pension matching, Nav pay etc. As a Captain, you'll easily clear over $200k without doing stupid amounts of overtime.

Flair is only $114k base for year one Captain [then 120k and 123k and no years of service]. The retirement package is 3.5% so you can expect to get a whole $166 per pay to retire on.

Those two jobs are largely the same. 737, domestic narrow body Captain working what ever your seniority can hold. Every single FO that I can think of (and nearly every Captain) would go there in a heartbeat if offered a position. The retention package isn't even a thought on the way out the door. It might as well be a gift card to purchase Flair swag.

I'm not paying today's bills with tomorrow's promises so Flair's position in the future is largely irrelevant. Maybe we will get a better contract; maybe we won't. Maybe one day we might get that shiny new travel policy that was announced 6 months ago. MAYBE the schedule will be released on time two months in a row.

We have NOT HIRED ANY rental pilots in the previous twelve months. We did have quite a few in the first year after expansion began. Any of them who didn't have a full BS bucket went back within the first year or so. Retention has been a problem all through the year and got to the point where Flair offered a retention package that won't effectively retain anyone. Too little money, too far in the future.

Mark my words, a year from now if we don't have a substantial increase in WAWCON, we will be looking at another 20% churn in 2023.

This is a retention problem; not a recruiting problem.

[homesick]

What a sad place to be for Canadian pilots.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, there too many Canadian expats, including me, who would love to come back home.

But the wages are not even close to international standards which makes it the only deterrent for many to make a move.

I shake my head in disbelief that there are pilots who think this is an acceptable course of action which will lead to any improvements in the long or short term of the working conditions.

[Tbayer2021]

I can't remember who it was, but someone here used the term to describe Canadian pilots as "subservient machismo". The more I thought about that the more it perfectly described a large part of the pilot population here.

[SPR]

Those people were rentals, nothing more.

"Rentals"? How goddamn demeaning. No wonder they were in a rush to leave when they were being treated like "rentals" instead of "employees". Also, nothing is guaranteed, and I bet they could have been convinced to stay if the WAWCON made it worth their while. The fatalism in assuming that pilots are going to leave no matter what, so why bother trying to retain them, has led to two of my previous employers crashing and burning after I left because they couldn't staff their operation.

[Gameon]

In principle it’s not great to bring in foreign pilots. No doubt. That’s said look at how many countries are having to look abroad. The US is an example. I don’t see the numbers making much of a difference. It’ll take well into late next year for the process to even have any benefit to Flair. In the meantime they certainly have a retention issue. The pay rates will have to increase substantially to make it a place a pilot can call home and establish roots. They’ve had some senior ( and I use that term loosely ) leave for AC and other better paying jobs with more secure futures. The retention bonus is a nice idea and well appreciated I’m sure but it won’t stop the bleeding. The Flairs board need to decide if they want an airline of choice or a stepping stone training airline for AC. We shall see.

[flying4dollars]

Those people were rentals, nothing more.

"Rentals"? How goddamn demeaning. No wonder they were in a rush to leave when they were being treated like "rentals" instead of "employees". Also, nothing is guaranteed, and I bet they could have been convinced to stay if the WAWCON made it worth their while. The fatalism in assuming that pilots are going to leave no matter what, so why bother trying to retain them, has led to two of my previous employers crashing and burning after I left because they couldn't staff their operation.

No, that was somewhat accurate. Many were Sunwing/overseas guys who lost their jobs in the pandemic and came to Flair because they were the only ones hiring at the time. Most of those had every intention of going back to their respective jobs once they were called back. Flair knew what it was and the ones that had 737 time were given a 'short course'.

So no, not demeaning and not why they were in a rush to leave.

[Aspiredtofly]

I want everyone to have a look at this. First they won't consider paying a livable wage to their own people who've spent thousand's of dollars on training for this opportunity. I'm sure these guys have piles of resumes at their desk by low timers. Meanwhile we have regional airlines who are paying 100K in bonuses for FO's in the US. Shame

#pilotsforachange

[Apestogetherstrong]

Word is the new contract is going to be out by Feb and it is going to be a game changer. Management realized that they domt wqnt pilots leaving and to retain them they need to start offering closer to what US is offering. Now its still a rumour so take it with a grain or salt. It will be a game changer either way cuz either people will stay or a lot more who are waiting to see the contract will leave. Staying very hopeful.

[Aspiredtofly]

Word is the new contract is going to be out by Feb and it is going to be a game changer. Management realized that they domt wqnt pilots leaving and to retain them they need to start offering closer to what US is offering. Now its still a rumour so take it with a grain or salt. It will be a game changer either way cuz either people will stay or a lot more who are waiting to see the contract will leave. Staying very hopeful.

Reminder set to february 1st 2023 and then I have to beg for seeing the contract

[SPR]

No, that was somewhat accurate. Many were Sunwing/overseas guys who lost their jobs in the pandemic and came to Flair because they were the only ones hiring at the time. Most of those had every intention of going back to their respective jobs once they were called back. Flair knew what it was and the ones that had 737 time were given a 'short course'.

So no, not demeaning and not why they were in a rush to leave.

And you don't think you could have retained the Sunwing pilots if Flair made it worth their while? Flair couldn't even offer an attractive enough WAWCON for Sunwing pilots to prevent them from going back?! Do you really not see that it wouldn't be inevitable for laid-off pilots to automatically take recalls if Flair made the compensation attractive? Even pilots who were overseas might not have gone back if they were paid and treated well. If the pilots jumped at the first opportunity to leave, that says a lot about Flair, not the pilots.

[flying4dollars]

No, that was somewhat accurate. Many were Sunwing/overseas guys who lost their jobs in the pandemic and came to Flair because they were the only ones hiring at the time. Most of those had every intention of going back to their respective jobs once they were called back. Flair knew what it was and the ones that had 737 time were given a 'short course'.

So no, not demeaning and not why they were in a rush to leave.

And you don't think you could have retained the Sunwing pilots if Flair made it worth their while? Flair couldn't even offer an attractive enough WAWCON for Sunwing pilots to prevent them from going back?! Do you really not see that it wouldn't be inevitable for laid-off pilots to automatically take recalls if Flair made the compensation attractive? Even pilots who were overseas might not have gone back if they were paid and treated well. If the pilots jumped at the first opportunity to leave, that says a lot about Flair, not the pilots.

I am not denying the compensation, nor am I defending it. My rebuttal was simply about the rentals. Of course if the pay was improved it may have helped. But many still would have gone back simply because a lot of them were not sure how long the music would last at Flair. I guess a lot of those expats were still wounded by their pasts from C3, Jetsgo, Royal etc. I flew with them so yes this is first hand knowledge. I knew many who came because it was the only job they could land (no pun intended) and many were still set on returning to their previous jobs be it for seniority (SWG) and tax free dollars (sandbox).

[daedalusx]

No, that was somewhat accurate. Many were Sunwing/overseas guys who lost their jobs in the pandemic and came to Flair because they were the only ones hiring at the time. Most of those had every intention of going back to their respective jobs once they were called back. Flair knew what it was and the ones that had 737 time were given a 'short course'.

So no, not demeaning and not why they were in a rush to leave.

And you don't think you could have retained the Sunwing pilots if Flair made it worth their while? Flair couldn't even offer an attractive enough WAWCON for Sunwing pilots to prevent them from going back?! Do you really not see that it wouldn't be inevitable for laid-off pilots to automatically take recalls if Flair made the compensation attractive? Even pilots who were overseas might not have gone back if they were paid and treated well. If the pilots jumped at the first opportunity to leave, that says a lot about Flair, not the pilots.

I am not denying the compensation, nor am I defending it. My rebuttal was simply about the rentals. Of course if the pay was improved it may have helped. But many still would have gone back simply because a lot of them were not sure how long the music would last at Flair. I guess a lot of those expats were still wounded by their pasts from C3, Jetsgo, Royal etc. I flew with them so yes this is first hand knowledge. I knew many who came because it was the only job they could land (no pun intended) and many were still set on returning to their previous jobs be it for seniority (SWG) and tax free dollars (sandbox).

With the WJ/SWG merge looming, it was a perfect opportunity for Flair to poach all of the high time, experienced Sunwing FOs and jr Capts and offer them DECs especially since if they do end up merging the list purely based on DOH then they’ll be sitting on the right seat for many years, especially the western based guys. The fact that Flair wasn’t able to keep these drivers and especially with how bad the morale is at SWG is quite telling. A true race to the bottom.
Oh well, I’m sure AC will be quite pleased with the amount of experienced pilots that will be in their courses in 2023 regardless of the MOA/flat pay.

[co-joe]

With the WJ/SWG merge looming, it was a perfect opportunity for Flair to poach all of the high time, experienced Sunwing FOs and jr Capts and offer them DECs especially since if they do end up merging the list purely based on DOH then they’ll be sitting on the right seat for many years, especially the western based guys. The fact that Flair wasn’t able to keep these drivers and especially with how bad the morale is at SWG is quite telling. A true race to the bottom.
Oh well, I’m sure AC will be quite pleased with the amount of experienced pilots that will be in their courses in 2023 regardless of the MOA/flat pay.

I think there's still plenty of time for the Sunwing pilots who chose to go back to regret their decision. Around this time next year when all the orange planes start getting painted pink, and they get put on that swoop pay scale....

[co-joe]

...
Air Canada is 3.5 years to upgrade where you'll earn a base salary of about $185k [actually, I think it is higher since you carry years of service and enter as a year 3 captain??] plus pension matching, Nav pay etc. As a Captain, you'll easily clear over $200k without doing stupid amounts of overtime.

Flair is only $114k base for year one Captain [then 120k and 123k and no years of service]. The retirement package is 3.5% so you can expect to get a whole $166 per pay to retire on.


This is a retention problem; not a recruiting problem.

3.5 years to upgrade at AC, but you'll be on reserve 18+ days a month for the next decade.

"What good's a reward if ya ain't around to use it?" - Han Solo

[Hangry]

...
Air Canada is 3.5 years to upgrade where you'll earn a base salary of about $185k [actually, I think it is higher since you carry years of service and enter as a year 3 captain??] plus pension matching, Nav pay etc. As a Captain, you'll easily clear over $200k without doing stupid amounts of overtime.

Flair is only $114k base for year one Captain [then 120k and 123k and no years of service]. The retirement package is 3.5% so you can expect to get a whole $166 per pay to retire on.


This is a retention problem; not a recruiting problem.

3.5 years to upgrade at AC, but you'll be on reserve 18+ days a month for the next decade.

"What good's a reward if ya ain't around to use it?" - Han Solo

That’s just not true on any level. But do go on.

[Arnie Pye]

Word is the new contract is going to be out by Feb and it is going to be a game changer. Management realized that they domt wqnt pilots leaving and to retain them they need to start offering closer to what US is offering. Now its still a rumour so take it with a grain or salt. It will be a game changer either way cuz either people will stay or a lot more who are waiting to see the contract will leave. Staying very hopeful.

Reminder set to february 1st 2023 and then I have to beg for seeing the contract

Apestogetherstrong never said 2023, nor did he say the 1st of February. We will likely have this contract finished before Feb 28, 2030 though so I would set your reminder for then.

If Management suddenly realized that they don't want pilots leaving, what are they doing to prevent this from happening? Honest question.

[Arnie Pye]

Could this not be viewed as bargaining in bad faith?

If the company has such little faith that they will be able to attract and retain pilots with the new contract that they must go abroad; I think someone could argue this is just surface bargaining or bargaining to an impasse.

[Flairpilot]

Tell me you know nothing about negotiations without saying you know nothing about negotiations?

The only question right now is this. Will Flair put enough good faith forward to skip the need for mediation? And that’s really 2 parts, the 2nd part being do they believe strongly enough in the business model to put up the cash…