Economic reasons speak to career expectations, which is what matters more than anything in a seniority integration.
Using that rational you support the SWA arguments for stapling the Air Tran F.O.s and taking the left seat away the Air Tran captains. They would say your expectations were not to make the money that they make to justify their integration method.
I've advocated no such thing. That's what the Age 65 crowd did with screwing over the guy who had his upgrade slot delayed five years, and worse, furloughing thousands of pilots.
Sure you did. You said the east pilots had no career epxectation since the airline was within days of shutting down. That means the pilots are down on their luck. Since they were "saved" by AWA they must now be punished for their management's incompetence so the junior pilots must lose all of their attrition based advancement. That is most certainly kicking somebody when they are down.
DOH would have done virtually nothing for us. Our upgrade times were 5-6 years, and placing us in DOH order would have extended those upgrade times to 12-18 years. In other words, essentially the same as the deal we got. We're dealing with an airline that has incredibly low retirements numbers until the mid to late 2020s. Not to mention that C&Rs do nothing to prevent furloughs, which are a real possibility here. With a DOH integration, the bottom of the list would have been stacked with AirTran pilots, just like you wanted to do to the AWA pilots. Patently unfair when we were growing, and they were stagnant.
Frankly, you just don't know what you're talking about.
Ahh, I do know what I am talking about. Upgrade times are elusive to predict. We can say upgrade times for somebody hired 5-6 years ago are 5-6 years. But what about somebody hired today? Does the growth rate continue such that the upgrade time remains the same? Would Air Tran's growth rate have continued for another 5-6 years unchanged?
I highly doubt it. No airline's does. Maybe it could have gone for another year or two, three at the outside.
SWA is a great example. Historically their upgrade times were in the 5 year range. That was when they were growing quite rapidly. Now that they have attained a rather large size and the market is quite saturated with the business model that growth rate can not be maintained. Thus their upgrade times have risen significantly. I'm not even sure what they are but I would imagine their junior guys are looking at in excess of 10-15 years, much like the junior guys at Air Tran would have been looking at.
You advocate a relative position integration with SWA. The senior Air Tran pilot was hired in the early 90s. The senior active SWA pilots were hired in the mid-late 70s. How is it fair to place them side by side on a system wide basis? Too, it would not be fair for the senior SWA guys to bid into ATL displacing Air Tran guys. Thus date-of-hire with conditions and restrictions. And yes, those could include clauses to protect downsizing of the ATL base.
Honoring binding arbitration is the gold standard that all parties use. Well, except for USAPA and SWAPA, of course.
Ahh, but even you mentioned all the subsequent arbitrations in the NWA/Republic case. Nobody accepts the first judgement without further debate. Unfortunately in the AAA/AWA case the first judgement was so destructive to more than half of the AAA pilots that further interpretive arbitrations would not have solved the problem.
I'd love to. Maybe you could start by asking your fellow AAA pilots why they fought so hard against it when times were good for them, and then supported it when times were bad for them. Ask the same question of every other pilot group. Maybe then you'll understand why this fantasy will never happen. Pilots are their own worst enemies
Agreed here, pilots are their own worst enemies at times. Again, long term thinking, that's what is missing.
Typhoonpilot