Cherokee_Cruiser
Bronteroc
I would definitely want to head into the SLI in the left seat.
Left seat numbers only matter as of merger announcement date April 4, 2016. Explained more down below...
Your actual seat doesn't matter in an SLI. The seniority list your company submits to fill the slots once the actual order is determined doesn't get rewritten based on who is in what seat. There could be a long period of slow to no movement for a part of the seniority list after an SLI (see: Southwest FOs) but your actual seniority won't be hurt.
The seats occupied matters to a degree, but that's only true for the merger announcement date of April 4, 2016. At that point, say we have 325 CAs and 360 FOs. Where this can come into play is protection of pre-merger seats for any fence/downgrade scenarios the arbitrator may think of. This happened at Pinnacle/Colgan/Mesaba. So to use this hypothetical case of 325 CAs as of April 4th merger date, an arbitrator could make a condition/restriction such as: "No Alaska pilot may be awarded or displaced to an Airbus CA seat, unless Virgin America pilots maintain 325 Airbus CA seats."
As an example, Colgan had 193 Q400 CAs on merger announcement dates. For the SLI, one of the C&Rs was: No Pinnacle or Mesaba pilot may be awarded a Q400 CA slot, unless Colgan pilots maintain at least 193 Q400 CA seats.
Essentially, there is a chance the SLI arbitrators can use staffing numbers as of announcement date to "protect" each side of the merger for CA seats. So if Alaska had 900 CAs as of April 4th 2016, then the arbitrators could make a C&R: "No Virgin America pilot may be awarded or displaced to a Boeing CA seat unless Alaska pilots maintain 900 Boeing CA seats..."
Hope that makes sense.
That’s what I meant. Might be a long wait for upgrade.
Most junior VX upgrade is Feb 2012. Most junior AS upgrade is July 2012.
Both have similar hiring sprees starting 2012 onwards.
I really think the FO portion of the SLI should shake out okay.
The update is that between January-July there will be 54 more upgrades. That means the bid openings from October this year (effective January) through April next year (effective July). I'm gonna keep an eye on how many go junior to me. I think if I can get ~25 below me to upgrade, that should be enough for a junior lineholder position most of the year. I may take that, and just bid as many 4-day trips with EWR/JFK overnights. So my new plan (for now) is to hold off a couple more months, and get in on the action at the tail end of those 54 upgrades.