I realize you've been kicked around by management for several years over there, but you've got to get over your trust issues. If GK says he intends to open an ATL SWA pilot base that is what he means. You won't be getting any guarantees... would you have trusted your previous mgt if they made you a "guarantee?"
Life is about to get dramatically better for you... try to relax.
I have yet to work for a company that actually honors the INTENT of the contract if the language isn't absolutely SOLID behind it (and our MEC has similar backgrounds), so yeah, I'm a little gunshy, as are 1,741 of my brethren.
That said, the issue is that Side Letter 9 has 4 major problems (and a bunch of little ones), one of which is that there is no resolution process that has an impartial 3rd party to settle disputes in the SL9 language. So what happens if we disagree down the road with SWAPA on implementation of SL9?
So I guess the question is, will the 4-party agreement clear up the 4 "MAJOR" issues in SL9 that don't agree with the bulletpoint AIP our Merger Committee put out in the terms of "protections", along with hopefully clearing up the dozens of minor issues, enough to, as you said, "relax".
Since you posted one of the big issues that were touted to us as "protection", let's work it so you can understand the issue:
From SL9: 2. As part of this agreement Southwest Airlines commits to establishing an Atlanta domicile with a minimum of ten (10) overnighting 737 and fifteen (15) overnighting 717 aircraft to be completed by the later of complete operational integration or October 1, 2014, unless otherwise mutually agreed by both parties.
Let's work it backwards.
Point 1: "unless otherwise mutually agreed by both parties."
It's a base for US, yet we will have no say so if the timeline to create those bases is extended indefinitely. "Both parties" allows SWA and SWAPA to decide when, if ever, to create an ATL 717 or 737 domicile.
Point 2: "10 overnighting 737 aircraft and 15 overnighting 717 aircraft". OK, that's overnighting aircraft. Who says there has to be 850 pilots? Who says there can't be that many overnighting aircraft and only HALF the crews to go with it? Coming from Nashville, where there are anywhere from 5-7 overnighting aircraft seasonally (it changes pretty regularly), and there's NO crew base, I'm aware that just because there's overnighting planes doesn't mean that there has to be enough based crews for each and every one of them.
That's the biggest point of this particular issue. We were all banking on the idea of letting the junior people go ahead of us into training while we enjoy the last of our bidding power for the holidays another year or two, then go into training afterwards and slide right into ATL, letting the senior among us hold onto decent schedules for a year or two of the next DECADE it will take us to get back where we are now. That's how our bulletpoints our Merger Committee sent to us read.
However, the reality from this part of SL9 basically doesn't say there will even BE an ATL domicile anytime in the near future. And why should there be? If there's already too many airplanes based there for SWA's model and they only plan to move aircraft to different bases after they are converted to SWA colors, there will be more ATL-based planes than they want for years (it will take a while to pull down to only 10 overnighting 737's). So why open a SWA ATL domicile until they get down to the last 10 ATL 737's and only THEN open it?
Lastly, here is a quote from Paragraph F.1 and F.2 of SL9:
"F. Base Protections
1. AirTran Pilots will be assigned to Atlanta for their initial vacancy bid at Southwest provided Atlanta vacancies are available.
2. If no Atlanta vacancies are available, newly transitioned AirTran Pilots will be awarded."
In other words, we don't get the protections of ATL if, when we come out of training, there IS no ATL base. That could be 2-3 YEARS into the 9-year "fence", or longer if SWAPA and SWA agree - we get no say in it.
What good is a fence if it fences a base that doesn't exist?
Another option: SWA opens ATL on the SWA side as a 737 base on Jan 1, 2012 and they fully staff the base. The first of our pilots hasn't gone to training when that vacancy becomes effective. So the base is fully-staffed with SWA pilots when our pilots come out of training, so they'll go to the bottom if they bid ATL in all likelihood. How many of our pilots will do that and just "suck it up" until more and more AAI pilots use the displacement rights and push out SWA pilots, knowing they'll be junior on reserve for half a year or more -vs- being a junior line holder in MDW or BWI? I'd bet not that many.
So it's not that we don't trust SWA to open that base, we just recognize that the deal we were sold (an ATL base that's fenced from the very outset) doesn't match the language in SL9 - could happen years from now and we go a long while without realizing the protections of the fence or it could happen before we even go to training and it becomes problematic to bid into it.
This is what we're waiting to see (among several other issues) whether it gets fixed in the 4-party agreement to match the AIP we were given.
