Airtran-Swa. out of seniority?

[funnyman12]

It was agreed to by AAI MEC because they were threatened with non-integration if we didnt agree to managements demands. If they threatened the Airtran pilots in that manner, it is only a matter of time until SWAPA is threatened. Hopefully im wrong.

 

[fletch717]

It was agreed to by AAI MEC because they were threatened with non-integration if we didnt agree to managements demands. If they threatened the Airtran pilots in that manner, it is only a matter of time until SWAPA is threatened. Hopefully im wrong.

This is the whole story. Threats and lies is all I've seen from SWA.

 

[freightdogfred]

first and foremost, it's about money.
how and why, it was agreed that swa would determine who and when came over. from what a union guy told me, was that mke and mco are not going to be bases anymore (for airtran, not swa), so they wanted to get those pilots trained first, regardless of order. atl is closer to order, but swa isn't going to bring all aai capt's to train as swa f/o's then train aai f/o's to be aai capt's for short term cuz of...$$$.

I used to believe, but now I don't. It's plainly evident that for all their claims for cost savings and synergies, it rings hollow. The delays of integration due to IT deficiences I believe to be accurate but not insurmountable if enough priority was placed. I flew a trip on my last sequence from FLL-PHL, with 12 passengers. (I've NEVER seen that here before.) The agent told me that was a big load, for a few weeks the flight has gone out completely empty. Evidently on the last big announced "Fare Sale" IT/Rev management had incorrectly set the 1-way fare at 700$, or roughly more than twice the going rate. I've talked to DL/NWA guys, and AA/TWA guys, airlines twice the size, and the integration was completed in half the time.

This pace is set for a reason.

 

[Whine Lover]

Whine I do know that the merger committee and the MEC were afforded a view at the transition schedule during negotiations, so maybe what they saw then they didn't feel the need for protections. I can tell you that the original transition schedule has been changed a number of times, based on SW needs. So it is what it is. Oh also check airman on the AirTran side can't go over as well. I know of one guy that was a check airman and when he found out he couldn't transition, he turned in his letter and went over.

On your 2nd point, not all AirTran capt's would have retained their seats. What the 1st agreement did do was afford a right of first return to that seat for the AirTran guys. Can't really remember the specifics of it, but I think that they could only return to the 717. Anyway, based on the 71's going away, most capt's would've lost their seats, albeit maybe not the top 200. Yes SW pay on 4/1/2012

As far as the MEC is concerned. 2 of the 7 that voted no were recalled, 2 others of the 7 are already at sw and 2 additional of the 7 will be at sw in Jan. Also 2 members of the merger committee are at sw already. No pitchforks. No unruly mobs. Just recalls. And so what? recalls after the fact? Big whoop! Didn't change anything. Change has to happen before the fact, not after. The MEC did change around the original merger committee shortly after the merger was announced, Still not sure why. I did hear it was because the original committees views on how we should proceed differed from the MEC so a change was made. In my opinion the wrong people were selected for the replacement. Not a senior one among them and all 717 guys. It became evident after the fact that they were all working for themselves anyway. Now if pitchforks and mobs were called for it was for those bastards. Just my opinion. I do know that a lawsuit was filed against alpa by some AirTran guys, but I don't know too much about it. Oh also, one of the original members of the merger committee, the committee that was changed around that is, he was voted on to the MEC, from MKE I think, and he was one of the 7 that said no. He is at SW now.

Look. say whatever you want to say about our MEC, but like it or not, they were the ones chosen to make decisions. Unions, much like our government, are set up as a republic. We choose those to make choices for us. If we don't like that choice, we get rid of them. Anyway just my prespective.

Excellent post. Informative and unemotional. I am typically not capable of that...So I salute you.

Seriously, it seems to be a self created mess ( via the MEC ) but, in the end I hope it all works out for everyone concerned.

Whine

 

[Lear70]

part of this is alpa's fault i believe. the way it was told to me was alpa didn't put up a fight for how the aai pilots were to be chosen. swa put on the table the way they wanted to do it, which was simply we(swa) will make the decisions on how the pilots are brought over, and alpa agreed to it. swa gave no plan and alpa didn't ask. swapa guy told me they were surprised alpa agreed to this, but that was a agreement between alpa and swa.

Your buddy is incorrect.

The way it went in negotiations was that the transition plan, including the 717's coming over to SWA, was given to us in a sheet that broke it down month by month, including draw-down in monthly block hours, etc (which is why I pushed for the increase in guarantee and we got it). I still have the original transition plan graph they gave us in negotiations, took a picture of it, could probably upload it if anyone wants to see it. Accounted for every aircraft by hull number by month through the end of the transition plan.

We asked for pay protection for people who were bypassed and they said No. We asked for a very specific training / transition flow after I brought up the fact that there was NO backstop for how many people and at what rate compared to aircraft leaving they had to take. They said No. We asked for a lot of things, they said No. We all know that story.

The instructions we had as the NC from the MEC reps was "Go out there, negotiate as best you can, take what you can get, the only thing you're allowed to say No for are being wholesale stapled or probationary periods (they tried the latter, we said No). The union reps were being recalled, the pilots were scared out of their mind from the GK letter after the first SIA was turned down. There wasn't a lot for us to do with SWA saying No to everything we asked for.

The idea that we just "didn't ask" is ludicrous and patently incorrect.

Incidentally, once the ISL negotiations were done and we were working on all the other conditions and restrictions like this, SWAPA was only in the room with us two days for a couple hours each of those two days for the entire week. The rest of the time it was just us and SWA management, so SWAPA really has no idea what was going on in the room, any more than we know what they were doing in their caucus room, except when something we were asking for required their input.

Just clearing up the misconception that we just said "OK" without trying to do SOMETHING to help mitigate the out-of-seniority transitions.

 

[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.