Spirit Airlines is canceling all of its flights through today, stranding thousands more passengers as a pilot’s strike continues into its second day.
The discount carrier said on its Web site Sunday that all Spirit Airlines flights have been canceled through today. Spirit pilots walked off the job on 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 (ALPA), said on Sunday.
The privately held airline, based in Miramar, Florida, carries 16,680 passengers per day — about 1 percent of the US total — mostly between the eastern US and the Caribbean and Latin America.
Spirit’s CEO said over the 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 today plus offering a US$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.
Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport is Spirit’s main hub, where it is the only airline to 14 international cities and five US destinations, airport spokesman Greg Meyer said. Around the country Spirit runs roughly 150 flights per day.
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 US$3,000 signing bonus and a larger retirement plan match.
But Captain Sean Creed, chairman of the Air Lines Pilot Association group at Spirit, said on 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.
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.
IDENTITY: Compared with other platforms, TikTok’s algorithm pushes a ‘disproportionately high ratio’ of pro-China content, a study has found Young Taiwanese are increasingly consuming Chinese content on TikTok, which is changing their views on identity and making them less resistant toward China, researchers and politicians were cited as saying by foreign media. Asked to suggest the best survival strategy for a small country facing a powerful neighbor, students at National Chia-Yi Girls’ Senior High School said “Taiwan must do everything to avoid provoking China into attacking it,” the Financial Times wrote on Friday. Young Taiwanese between the ages of 20 and 24 in the past were the group who most strongly espoused a Taiwanese identity, but that is no longer
A magnitude 6.4 earthquake and several aftershocks battered southern Taiwan early this morning, causing houses and roads to collapse and leaving dozens injured and 50 people isolated in their village. A total of 26 people were reported injured and sent to hospitals due to the earthquake as of late this morning, according to the latest Ministry of Health and Welfare figures. In Sising Village (西興) of Chiayi County's Dapu Township (大埔), the location of the quake's epicenter, severe damage was seen and roads entering the village were blocked, isolating about 50 villagers. Another eight people who were originally trapped inside buildings in Tainan
‘ARMED GROUP’: Two defendants used Chinese funds to form the ‘Republic of China Taiwan Military Government,’ posing a threat to national security, prosecutors said A retired lieutenant general has been charged after using funds from China to recruit military personnel for an “armed” group that would assist invading Chinese forces, prosecutors said yesterday. The retired officer, Kao An-kuo (高安國), was among six people indicted for contravening the National Security Act (國家安全法), the High Prosecutors’ Office said in a statement. The group visited China multiple times, separately and together, from 2018 to last year, where they met Chinese military intelligence personnel for instructions and funding “to initiate and develop organizations for China,” prosecutors said. Their actions posed a “serious threat” to “national security and social stability,” the statement
CLASH OF WORDS: While China’s foreign minister insisted the US play a constructive role with China, Rubio stressed Washington’s commitment to its allies in the region The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday affirmed and welcomed US Secretary of State Marco Rubio statements expressing the US’ “serious concern over China’s coercive actions against Taiwan” and aggressive behavior in the South China Sea, in a telephone call with his Chinese counterpart. The ministry in a news release yesterday also said that the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs had stated many fallacies about Taiwan in the call. “We solemnly emphasize again that our country and the People’s Republic of China are not subordinate to each other, and it has been an objective fact for a long time, as well as
RSS