Des Moines Allegiant pilot warns a strike could be coming

“Allegiant needs to invest in their people and their pilots.”

So says Tyler Heavey, a captain with Allegiant Airlines for the last six years.

He told me he loves his job. But he doesn’t love the way the company has treated him and his fellow pilots.

“Allegiant was one of the only airlines to actually furlough its pilots” during fall 2020, the height of the COVID pandemic, Heavey said. “They wanted significant concessions [from workers]. And when that didn’t happen, then they chose to furlough over a hundred pilots.”

That included Heavey, who was out of work for months.

“Really flips your life upside down,” he said of that time.

Tyler Heavey, a captain for Allegiant Airlines based in Des Moines, appears in a screenshot from a video call with Iowa Starting Line’s Amie Rivers. (Amie Rivers/Iowa Starting Line)

Heavey is one of around 40 Allegiant pilots based in Des Moines, and one of around 1,400 Allegiant pilots at 22 crew bases across the country, who unionized with Teamsters. They’ve been working without a contract because they’ve been negotiating their last one for the past five years.

It doesn’t help that the union—because labor law is different for airlines—can only negotiate with a federal mediator. That’s been happening just two or three days a month, Heavey said.

“So it’s very hard to make progress,” he said.

That progress, he said, was simple: Give Allegiant pilots what pilots of other airlines get, so that good pilots stop leaving, something Heavey said was happening “every single day” because of money and respect.

“Everything that we’re asking for, and I guess you could say demanding, is what our peers have,” Heavey said. “ It’s industry standard.”

Allegiant has said it has offered an immediate 50% average increase in hourly wages that will rise to 70% over the life of a new 5-year contract.

“It sounds nice, but that still would put us nearly 30% below our peers, and that’s just in hourly rates,” Heavey said. “ We’re already overworked and underpaid, and they want to continue that.”

He said other sticking points for workers include not getting paid for the entire time a pilot was at the airport, and the company’s threat to “basically undo seniority.”

For all those reasons, around 40 captains, first officers, and flight attendants stood for hours in a solidarity picket last month at the Des Moines airport to get attention to their fight, joining a national Allegiant picket.

A strike was authorized by the union a year ago, with 97% in favor. But Heavey said he hopes it doesn’t come to that.

“We care deeply about this community. But if Allegiant continues to do this, we are gonna continue to lose qualified pilots,” which could mean Des Moines losing routes, affecting travelers, he said.

“We take pride in flying them safely to their destinations,” he added. “ We are a part of the community. We want to have a nice, reliable product for our customers, and we also want to be able to grow. And without a contract, that is not possible.”

Heavey knows Allegiant can afford it, pointing to a failed resort venture that cost the company hundreds of millions of dollars.

“It just seems like their priorities are everything except their pilots and their people,” Heavey said. “That’s all we’re asking for.”

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