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Flight attendants at Frontier Airlines are pushing to go on strike. The union representing them, the Association of Flight Attendants, said Tuesday that it will poll them on authorization for a work stoppage amid negotiations over a big change in how Frontier operates its aircraft routes.
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Frontier has for a few months been touting its shift to the “out and back” model more commonly practiced by its European budget peers like Ryanair. In the U.S., carriers will traditionally send planes out to a few different destinations and put up staff in hotels. Under the out-and-back model, the planes go out to their destination and back to their base, where crews go back to their own homes before their next shift.
During an earnings call in March, CFO Mark Mitchell explained how the change would help Frontier realize $200 million in savings this year.
“You’re going to see we’ve talked about previously, lower travel-related costs,” he said. “You’re going to see crew efficiency benefit. You’re going to see benefits on the station operations front. You’re also going to see a higher capture rate from a maintenance standpoint at our crew bases, which is going to drive some improved favorability on the maintenance front. And then, with the initiatives that we have to simplify the network, you’re going to see an increase in [aircraft] utilization.”
In October, CEO Barry Biffle said the company had gotten the out-and-back rate up 50% in recent years. In March, he said the rate was up to 80% by June.
The Frontier flight attendants say those savings are coming at their expense because they’re now spending more of their time commuting and boarding planes instead of flying on them — which is the only time they get paid. They’ve been negotiating a new contract since December, but Reuters reported in May that they’ve filed for separate, federally mediated negotiations to work out a mutually beneficial compromise on the change.
The AFA says Frontier has yet to engage with them. In communications to the union provided to Quartz, Frontier disputed its obligation to negotiate the issue separately, writing that “the Railway Labor Act does not require such a separate process, and most importantly, a separate process is highly impractical — because all proposals to amend the contract – by both the AFA and Frontier – must be considered together during a common process.”
Frontier said that any strikes resulting from “illegal work action” would expose flight attendants to discipline — flight attendants’ unions can only go on strike with government approval — though it also said that the company’s goal “is to maintain a positive and collaborative relationship with the union and all our Flight Attendants.”
The strike authorization voting will begin mid-August and end in mid-September.
Source : Quartz