How so? This one always perplexes me. I hear the sentiment, but have never really heard the reason for it, other than the guys being stapled being idiots.
Everyone can fly jets.
But everyone won't show up on time, do the work, embrace the culture, do the things that the company wants them to do when they really don't feel like doing it and represent the brand well.
So if you simply adopt 1500 pilots overnight without any sort of personality screening or filtering, it's a potential nightmare — which is why sometimes mergers are usually a cultural disaster if not handled very carefully.
My employer is really big on their corporate image and I knew that when I got hired. Shoes shined, wear the coat when they say wear the coat, wear the hat, hair cut, look sharp. I knew it was a big deal when I filled out the UPAS application back in 1997 so those things have never been something I fretted because I knew exactly what I was getting into almost 20 years ago.
I had a copilot that was originally hired at another airline, who through merger/flow/whatever that spend inordinate amounts of time complaining about our uniform standards, not following them, how at "previous carrier" we weren't concerned with this or that and took each opportunity to tell me what he was and wasn't going to do. An example is that the pilot flying will stand at the door and say goodbye to passengers. But at his airline, they didn't do that because "we're not getting paid and I don't work without pay. Plus, I might get SARS".
He was basically the type of person that would probably walk into a fast-casual Mexican food restaurant and complain about the line, complain having to choose between tacos, burritos or a bowl, and complain about having to choose each and every item and then wait for it to be wrapped up. And OMG, I have to buy the chips separately… AT CHIPOTLE.
From my perspective, I could name a thousand great pilots that look at all of the items he complained about as "no big deal, I want to be a submarine captain, lets go fly jets" that would gleefully trade him positions.
I don't want that attitude to spread virally through the company.