AA/US-AW. Now the fun begins.

We do it out of love. I'd much rather share a cockpit with one of you guys vs someone who will look at me as an NRA until they retire.

I like baseball, they like baseball, I drink beer on layovers, they drink beer on layovers… Eff it, lets go fly jets.

That's the alpha and the omega of my merger experience. However, it was moooostly equitable and done quickly so there wasn't much of an opportunity for people to sit around in the echo chamber.
 
I'm not sure why everyone is getting so fired up over this. Each group proposes the most advantageous ordering they think they can get away with while keeping a straight face. From the L-AA standpoint, the US Airways guys are making twice as much money as they did pre-merger, with (eventual) access to a huge fleet of wide body equipment. The entire US Airways pilot group got a windfall from this merger already!

It's too bad they didn't predicate the new contract and pay rates on the implementation of the SLI, because I pretty much guarantee you'd have USAPA on mutiny watch! At this point, it behooves the AA and EUS groups to delay as much as possible. West guys will slowly rot in PHX as it continues to downsize.
 
AA put the last pre merger (an off the street guy) AA pilot hired 12/2013 ahead of a 2004AWA and a 1987LUS guy. I believe LAA had 3-4 classes from 10/1 until 12/9. A combo of OTS and eagle flows.
How can you tell? Not disputing anything you said, but the first round of proposals they included DOH this time i saw XX under DOH.
 
Well the thing is who would you rather have a beer with? I'm starting to really worry about having to fly with some AA guys, i'm seriously worried they will be the worst people on earth to share a flight deck with.

It's been my experience (on the 80, at least) that the LAA captains are a great bunch of guys and galls. In five years of flying the 80, there has only been one captain that I wouldn't get back in an airplane with. And he had the biggest do not pair list in that base. We have our 10% like every where else. But overall a great bunch of people. Most will buy coffee or a root beer at least once, and often a meal or two for the FO, or even the whole crew.

I'm more interested how it's going to go when we start mixing the FA's. I hear all this stuff about LUS FO's being expected to sign everyone in on the hotel sheet, print HI3's for the whole crew, and "convert" the van times? Sorry, not in my job description.
 
I'm not sure why everyone is getting so fired up over this. Each group proposes the most advantageous ordering they think they can get away with while keeping a straight face. From the L-AA standpoint, the US Airways guys are making twice as much money as they did pre-merger, with (eventual) access to a huge fleet of wide body equipment. The entire US Airways pilot group got a windfall from this merger already!

It's too bad they didn't predicate the new contract and pay rates on the implementation of the SLI, because I pretty much guarantee you'd have USAPA on mutiny watch! At this point, it behooves the AA and EUS groups to delay as much as possible. West guys will slowly rot in PHX as it continues to downsize.
A lot of what you just said I heard when AA combined with TWA. It does no good for your entire pilot group to have that "they should be happy, look at where they were" attitude. AA was the one in bankruptcy this time.

Just my opinion from somebody who always wanted to fly for AA growing up, until the TWA debacle. Now, I just observe.
 
A lot of what you just said I heard when AA combined with TWA. It does no good for your entire pilot group to have that "they should be happy, look at where they were" attitude. AA was the one in bankruptcy this time.

Just my opinion from somebody who always wanted to fly for AA growing up, until the TWA debacle. Now, I just observe.
TWA was minutes away from liquidating. AA essentially bought the assets but were nice and brought the pilots with them. Similar to what Republic did with Midwest Express.

It's extremely sad that one's choice decades ago impacts your long term career but without a national seniority system, it won't change. In a way, ALPA used to have a defacto national seniority list as their merger policy was always DOH but was changed for political gain years ago.
 
I'm not sure why everyone is getting so fired up over this.

I'll step on that landmine.

Because.

Every time either side comes up with an absolutely ridiculous statement like this, there are those that are angered by it and those that are emboldened by it and you shall spend the rest of your career keeping those two sides separated.

We still, to this day, joke about "Super Premium Flying" and there are people that still buy into it and fight with those that are angered by it and both sides are willing to drop trow and show their assess at their respective daughter's country club cotillion to make a point.

it costs time, costs money and plants the seeds for decades of malcontent.
 
I'll step on that landmine.

Because.

Every time either side comes up with an absolutely ridiculous statement like this, there are those that are angered by it and those that are emboldened by it and you shall spend the rest of your career keeping those two sides separated.

We still, to this day, joke about "Super Premium Flying" and there are people that still buy into it and fight with those that are angered by it and both sides are willing to drop trow and show their assess at their respective daughter's country club cotillion to make a point.

it costs time, costs money and plants the seeds for decades of malcontent.
Our local reps have so far done little to quench the fire that is spreading. They typically drum up support for themselves by pushing an agenda of fear on the group with little "unity building" thought. It's frustrating to watch them embellish certain things to get the locals fired up when most of what they said doesn't even have any truth to it, and even if it did, they should realize it's purely political posturing.

It's similar to our governmental political system, the "ZOMG he/she said 'xyz' can you believe it? 'Merica!" because that it what the masses want to hear. I'm reminded how when Ron Paul stated we in effect caused 9/11 in the last presidential debates, the crowd boo'd and the other politicians ate him for lunch screaming 'Merica! yet when you listen to him speak, you realize he's (kinda) right.
 
Our local reps have so far done little to quench the fire that is spreading. They typically drum up support for themselves by pushing an agenda of fear on the group with little "unity building" thought. It's frustrating to watch them embellish certain things to get the locals fired up when most of what they said doesn't even have any truth to it, and even if it did, they should realize it's purely political posturing.

It's similar to our governmental political system, the "ZOMG he/she said 'xyz' can you believe it? 'Merica!" because that it what the masses want to hear. I'm reminded how when Ron Paul stated we in effect caused 9/11 in the last presidential debates, the crowd boo'd and the other politicians ate him for lunch screaming 'Merica! yet when you listen to him speak, you realize he's (kinda) right.

There's a distinct dead end that they're going to hit and the result isn't going to be pretty.

As the Easties about how well that worked for them last time they got wrapped around the axle about SLI!
 
TWA was minutes away from liquidating. AA essentially bought the assets but were nice and brought the pilots with them. Similar to what Republic did with Midwest Express.

It's extremely sad that one's choice decades ago impacts your long term career but without a national seniority system, it won't change. In a way, ALPA used to have a defacto national seniority list as their merger policy was always DOH but was changed for political gain years ago.
You'll fit right in at AA. Best of luck to the pilot group.
 
wheelsup said:
Really? Because that is how Piedmont and USAir were merged under the then current merger policy.

Not quite. You've been listening to too many Eastie rants. :)

Piedmont and USAir were merger by DOH with a bunch of very important conditions and restrictions, including one big one that essentially took four years of seniority away from Piedmont pilots for all intents and purposes because of rapid growth that they experienced that USAir had not. So for those pilots, it was DOH in name only. There were also restrictions on 767 slots and several other things that made the DOH list not really DOH. Arbitrator Kagel basically used a DOH list only because ALPA merger policy at the time mentioned that DOH was one item among many that should be considered, and it was easier to show that DOH was used by constructing the list that way and then adding in C&Rs that made it all but irrelevant in actual bidding. But policy never said that integrations were to be done by DOH. Only that DOH was one factor to be considered.

Edit: Now that I think about it, I may have it backwards about which group got the four year additional seniority credit. Been a while since I've looked at these awards. Either way, the point is the same, though.
 
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I like baseball, they like baseball, I drink beer on layovers, they drink beer on layovers… Eff it, lets go fly jets.

That's the alpha and the omega of my merger experience. However, it was moooostly equitable and done quickly so there wasn't much of an opportunity for people to sit around in the echo chamber.

All one has to do is listen to the senior nAAtives. They don't want us here. We weren't invented here. We'll never be on the same playing field as they were. And these are the super senior B-Scalers I'm talking about.
 
I'm not sure why everyone is getting so fired up over this. Each group proposes the most advantageous ordering they think they can get away with while keeping a straight face. From the L-AA standpoint, the US Airways guys are making twice as much money as they did pre-merger, with (eventual) access to a huge fleet of wide body equipment. The entire US Airways pilot group got a windfall from this merger already!

It's too bad they didn't predicate the new contract and pay rates on the implementation of the SLI, because I pretty much guarantee you'd have USAPA on mutiny watch! At this point, it behooves the AA and EUS groups to delay as much as possible. West guys will slowly rot in PHX as it continues to downsize.

Delaying as long as humanly possible is not good for us (despite what the CLT 99 hires say). Remember, all the MTA Block Hour restrictions go away at the end of 2016. You don't think Dougie and Scooter will take apart the former USAir piece by piece just to make a point?
 
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