DOH is not ludicrous. DOH is objective. It is a measure of the day you were hired. Anything else that you throw into the mix is subjective. If you want to tie somebody's career to the day they got hired via a seniority system, which is ludicrous, then in all fairness DOH SHOULD be the determining factor with regard to a merger. Fences, then can determine the subjective nature of what somebody's career expectations.
The one thing you can count on in all of this is that pilots will do everything in their power to get ahead, at the expense of anyone necessary. DAL/NWA did it. They have 747 rates equal to that of the 777. Similarly, the A330 is equivalent to that of a 767-400. Being as DAL pilots basically drove the merger, it is they who took this brilliant initiative in order to secure better spots in the seniority battle. Arguments were made that certain aircraft were going away, and a few did. Others survived, and they are still flying today. Europe has tanked, while the Orient has thrived. Yet the DAL pilots made out better than DOH in the seniority list, and guys will let it affect them for the rest of their lives. Had the award gone DOH, and fences resembling ANYTHING more than a handful of airplanes been erected, both pilot groups would then truly be experiencing their near to mid term career expectations.
Same with East/West. If you put a 4 month pilot above me in a seniority list, I will do everything in my power to prevent the implementation of that list. Never mind that you granted him immediate access to widebody flying which were outside of his career expectations, while his pilot group and the SWA pilot group were leading chargers of changing age 60. The East is rightfully pissed, and it is justified because they have done something about it which is very hard to do. They voted another union onto the property. To get that many pilots unified into one corner is akin to making mountains. Much has been said about suffering low pay rates to do it. That makes a very large assumption that better rates could have been negotiated in a very poor environment. Much like Comair pilots being absolutely sure that filing a PID would have magically transformed DAL management into combining the two groups and giving up an enormous cost advantage, the LOA 93 argument is a red herring. Nobody knows where they would be today. You are where you are, and any other opinion is just that-opinion.
The funny thing is that the AWA pilots are the big finger pointers at USAirs crappy rates. A cursory check of a few rates shows that USAir leads AWA in A330s, non-existent at AWA, and 757 aircraft. So that is one point, and another is that those are AWA regular rates, whereas the USAir rates are BK rates. AWA has never brought anything to the table in the form of compensation or retirement. They have been the anchor around the neck of unionized pilots since their inception.
Career Expectations are in the eye of the beholder, and it changes with the cancellation of a route, or an aircraft order, or a pay rate, or some other situation which has nothing to do with individual pilot choices. You want to criticize a pilot's choice of employer, then unsaddle that pilot from the burden of seniority and open up a true Pandora's Box of fairness. We are all just one bad CEO from bankruptcy. We can go from industry leading to bk in the snap of our fingers, just as crummy airline out in the desert, substantially propped up by the government, can buy a global operator and have a windfall list fall into their lap. I would cling to it like grim death as well.
It will now get even more interesting as AA joins the fray. The West side now has pilots on furlough, surprise surprise. Additionally, their flying consists of flying east into the former USAir system. You just gotta laugh at career expectations and where they end up. Where do you stick the junior AWA pilot relative to the AA pilots? He is senior to active East pilots, so you can't put him down with the furloughed AA pilots. At the same time, how do you place a furloughed AWA pilot ahead of active AA pilots, which will have to happen if the NIC award is used and you slot active USAir pilots in appropriately. History since the USAir/AWA merger has proven just how inaccurate the NIC award was with regard to career expectations, and I believe to some degree as well with NWA/DAL. AA will have better pay rates than USAirways pilots, yet they are in BK? Is the "you are in bk, so that is a strike against you" argument dead? Does the fact that USAPA can't convince anybody of anything mean that they deserve less consideration in a seniority arbitration hearing while being tied to a seniority system? Should being stupid punish you in a seniority based system arbitration? Should an arbitrator "punish" your career, a seniority, based career for clinging to traditional values? Why are arguments even being made at a seniority arbitration hearing? Both sides of the argument are going to to try and jade the mediator into their idea of fairness, and their idea of their career expectations.
Seniority list arbitration is a joke, and will become even more so as newer airlines such as Jblue and spirit get thrown into the mix, as well as nice operators like Hawaiian and Alaska. Guys will argue, fights will occur, and permanent division will pull yet another Jenga piece out from beneath the already shaky tower that is pilot unity.
And so it goes.
