Airtran-Swa. out of seniority?

[Max Powers]

That is what happens when a CEO decides he knows better than an arbitrator who can look at this without emotion. "Golden rule Baby"..LMAO - virtually all the informed pilots at other airlines know what went down and that means as an original SWA guy you can keep your head low; when walking thru the terminal or asking for someones jumpseat.

 

[General Lee]

That is what happens when a CEO decides he knows better than an arbitrator who can look at this without emotion. "Golden rule Baby"..LMAO - virtually all the informed pilots at other airlines know what went down and that means as an original SWA guy you can keep your head low; when walking thru the terminal or asking for someones jumpseat.

Redflyer will never understand that.



Bye Bye---General Lee

 

[scoreboardII]

I

This pace is set for a reason.

What reason?

 

[scoreboardII]

That is what happens when a CEO decides he knows better than an arbitrator who can look at this without emotion. "Golden rule Baby"..LMAO - virtually all the informed pilots at other airlines know what went down and that means as an original SWA guy you can keep your head low; when walking thru the terminal or asking for someones jumpseat.

Hey max, ******************** you and the horse you road in on. Try using some braincells and determine pilots have no say in anything at any airline when it comes to mergers.

 

[FlyinGuy]

That is what happens when a CEO decides he knows better than an arbitrator who can look at this without emotion. "Golden rule Baby"..LMAO - virtually all the informed pilots at other airlines know what went down and that means as an original SWA guy you can keep your head low; when walking thru the terminal or asking for someones jumpseat.

Please explain why a SWA guy has to keep his head low when the CEO was the one that brokered this deal?

 

[humveedriver]

Please explain why a SWA guy has to keep his head low when the CEO was the one that brokered this deal?

I believe he is referring to the no Southwest pilot harmed mantra. I personally thought the days of just straight stapling employee groups died after Mckaskill/Bond was passed. Or at least the idea that, stapling would be an option for an employee group that was not apart of a bankrupt airline. I don't think you need to hang your head, but I didn't and still don't understand that stance, nor my friends at other carriers. I would prefer to save my energy at this point for matters other than SLI. It's over. Maybe we can have some more fun with it at a later date, like when we buy Alaska..

 

[Lear70]

What reason?

So that Southwest can continue to collect baggage fees and take advantage of a B-scale work force for years.

I agree with Freddy, they could outsource the I.T. problem with Int'l Res and have it up and running within a few months and merge the two operations just like NWA and Delta did with FOM training, badge issuance, and then one day, "flipping the switch" and it's done in less than a year (we'd be integrated by now).

Southwest has chosen not to do that, when it IS possible. The only reason NOT to do it that way is money, pure and simple. Our baggage fees and lower-wage employees are a nice way for SWA to increase their cash position while they slowly build up the marketing plan for that international flying under the SWA brand.

If they flipped the switch overnight, there would probably be a dramatic amount of lost revenue while they streamlined the operation to get us up to your block hour average, got all of us trained to where they could mix flight crews (that took a while even at NWA/DAL and with this deal you'd be adding in required training on the Classic), while suddenly losing that money from baggage fees as well as losing initial bookings while the public figures out that it's Southwest now selling those international tickets.

 

[Max Powers]

Hey max, ******************** you and the horse you road in on. Try using some braincells and determine pilots have no say in anything at any airline when it comes to mergers.

Actually they do have a say. Look at other majors and what happened to them after they merged. AirTran folks are the ones who should say "f u and the horse you rode in". Scoreboard does a great job of acting the sore loser.

 

[Max Powers]

Please explain why a SWA guy has to keep his head low when the CEO was the one that brokered this deal?

This CEO brokered "this deal" because SWAPA agreed to fly a bigger plane for the same pay and will soon agree to little or no raise in sec 6 negotiations.

Flyinguy are you that naive?

 

[Lear70]

I believe he is referring to the no Southwest pilot harmed mantra. I personally thought the days of just straight stapling employee groups died after Mckaskill/Bond was passed. Or at least the idea that, stapling would be an option for an employee group that was not apart of a bankrupt airline. I don't think you need to hang your head, but I didn't and still don't understand that stance, nor my friends at other carriers. I would prefer to save my energy at this point for matters other than SLI. It's over. Maybe we can have some more fun with it at a later date, like when we buy Alaska..

You'd better hope not.

If SWA ever buys another airline that's not bankrupt and that airline puts up a fight, we're screwed.

Staple us to the bottom, then JUST when we're getting back to where we were in relative seniority (8-10 YEARS from now), they buy another airline that gets a FAIR integration and voila, our pilots would be frozen at their seniority for the rest of their career, and in many cases become career F/O's.

Money is all fine and good, but part of Quality of Life is sitting in the left seat, whether people want to admit it or not. I looked at the SWA list. Less than 3% of their F/O's were bypassing CA upgrade for Quality of Life pre-merger. Most people like the left seat; it's just human nature.

As such, you put another airline acquisition with a FAIR integration per M/B in the mix, you can kiss your CA seat goodbye if you're an F/O now at AAI and if you're a CA less than 50% down our pre-merger AAI CA list, you'll never see the top half of the seniority list unless you're one of our very few CA's under 40.

If it's a bankrupt carrier going out of business and they get stapled? Fine. If not? Game over in terms of upward career progression.

The math is pretty simple, and the risks with a highly-stagnant seniority list here IF there's another merger are pretty high. I just hope the playing field levels for a while in terms of mergers and acquisitions once AA and UAir do whatever it is they're going to do... SWA has at least 3-5 years just to finish assimilating AirTran and figuring out the Caribbean puzzle pieces and where they want to put them. After that, I just pray for organic growth and expansion.