Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Spirit Airlines cancels flights through Tuesday

Spirit Airlines is canceling all of its flights through Tuesday, stranding thousands more passengers as a pilot's strike continues into its second day.

The discount carrier said on its website Sunday that all Spirit Airlines flights have been cancelled through June 15. Spirit pilots walked off the job Saturday amid an ongoing contract dispute with the airline that has lasted for more than three years. Spirit pilots have said their pay lags behind competitors such as AirTran Airways and JetBlue.

"None of the planes are moving and none of our pilots have crossed the picket line," Paul Hopkins, strike committee chairman of Spirit's unit of The Air Line Pilots Association, said Sunday.

The disruptions include the air carrier's Las Vegas flights. Spirit flies nonstop from McCarran International Airport to Detroit and Fort Lauderdale. The airline accounts for less than 1 percent of McCarran's passenger traffic.

The privately held airline, based in Miramar, Fla., carries 16,680 passengers per day - about 1 percent of the U.S. total - mostly between the eastern U.S. and the Caribbean and Latin America. Spirit's CEO said this weekend that no talks were scheduled with picketing pilots.

The shutdown continues to cause major problems for Spirit's flyers. The airline said it is refunding fares for flights Saturday through Tuesday plus offering a $100 credit toward future flights as it tries to get its passengers booked onto other airlines.

But people who needed to replace their Spirit tickets found the cost of same-day fares on other airlines was two- to three times more than their tickets.

The company has offered to raise pilot pay by 30 percent over five years, although work rule changes mean pilots would have to fly more to earn that money. Spirit's offer also kept a four-day break between every pilot trip, something the company said no other ALPA contract has. The offer also included a $3,000 signing bonus and a larger retirement plan match.

But Capt. Sean Creed, chairman of the Air Lines Pilot Association group at Spirit, said Sunday that the company's offer only matches inflation. He said that he's looking to have wages for Spirit pilots competitive with those at rivals like JetBlue Airways Corp.

Creed noted that a captain with 10 years experience at JetBlue earns about $158 an hour; that compares with $138 an hour for a Spirit captain with 15 years experience.

"We are looking for parity," he said. He noted the proposed increase is good but "it's spread out too far."

Spirit CEO Ben Baldanza said in an interview Saturday that he hoped to get some of Spirit's 31 aircraft flying soon with management pilots or others who cross the picket line, but no such flights have yet taken place. Baldanza said that Spirit has made money over the past year and a half. He said he knew its pilots would need raises.

The carrier has about 440 active pilots.

The strike is being closely watched in the industry because pilots at much larger carriers, including AMR Corp.'s American Airlines, are also locked in tough negotiations.

The last strike at a major carrier was in 2005, when Northwest Airlines mechanics walked off the job rather than accept deep pay cuts. The strike failed after Northwest replaced them.

Sun staff contributed to this report.

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