I don't have a dog in this fight, but I must take issue with this statement.
No sir, USAir is, was, and probably will continue to be the toilet bowl of this profession. USAir is THE WORST airline I have the misfortune of being forced to ride on - and has been for many years running. If there was any equity in the bankruptcy system, you would have been working at a new carrier years ago, because there is NO justifiable reason why USAir should still exist.
Sorry you picked a crappy airline to go to work for, to some extent I believe the blame lies more in management than the employees. But again, you seem to be laboring under the delusion that your airline isn't the worst in the US, and wasn't saved (for heaven only knows what reason) when HP came in and pulled your sorry a$$es out of yet another BK filing.
I never applied to either carrier, but at no point in the last 15 years would I have gone to USAir - I would have gone to America West.
I'm sorry that you chose to go to work for a carrier that, well frankly just sucks. If HP's management had ANY brains they would have let Airways die on the vine and then move in on the carcass. They didn't and now we're all stuck listening to you bellyache about how you and your failing airline (which should have been out of business ten years ago) were hard done by.
As the old saying goes - you played with the bull, and you got the horn. You insisted on binding arbitration, you were warned (by the arbitrator) to find a compromise, as you wouldn't like the results if he was forced to rule. What part of this outcome is a surprise to you. When a toy train goes into a tunnel, are you amazed every time it comes out the other side?!?
Get a grip.