You forgot a couple of things that you and the rest of the Kool Aid Klan ALWAYS leave out.
(1) The above formula stapled almost every AT FO to the bottom of the list.
(2) Although the 717 captain slots were retained, no AT pilot would be able to upgrade to 737CA until the 2005 SWA hires had an opportunity to upgrade...whether it took two years or twenty.
Oh by the way, when the 717s were subsequently announced that they were gone, I'd bet number (2) would've been enacted so that SWAPA would've captured all the CA seats just like they did in deal that was ratified.
Both deals sucked from the AT point of view. Why can't you guys understand that... If you think that AT is huge supporter of ALPA, you would be wrong. The unhappiness with the process is an individual, personal thing, not as a result of ALPA propaganda. PCL is one of the few big ALPA guys we have.
Phred
I "forgot" nothing of the sort.
(1) The formula did NOT "staple almost every [AirTran] FO to the bottom of the list." What a bunch of self-serving crap. Read it again. The first ~450 former AirTran FOs got feathered in
exactly as stated, with a varying loss of seniority starting at just about 2.5 years, then worked up to about 3 years, then down to a little less than two years for the last group. Every single one of those ~450 AirTran FOs has original, pre-Sept 2011 Southwest guys behind them on the list. Then on the list, the loss of
less than two years' seniority caused the next ~370 to be behind the last FO on the orig pre-Sept 2011 SWA list. Finally the last ~80 AirTran FOs, who were actually hired more than a year
after our last FO, were added next, as the last of both companies' pre-Sept 2011 pilots. Did you want those guys to
gain seniority? Or are you just bitching about those ~370 who lost AirTran seniority from 22.5 months down fairly linearly to only 5 months which put them behind the last orig SWA guy? Really? THAT's your definition of "stapling almost every FO to the bottom of the list"?
(2) Here I don't even know what you're trying to get at. Perhaps you're confusing or mixing the two agreements. Twenty years? What are you talking about? There is no stipulation on timing for ANY Southwest guy to upgrade. None. Obviously all upgrades through the end of 2014 will be orig Southwest guys, but that's only until the specified date in the agreement. And it certainly won't include all of our 2005 hires (there were lots of them). The first AirTran guy to upgrade at Southwest will do so in 2015, and in fact, nobody BUT former AirTran guys will upgrade for quite a while after that until all the AirTran guys above the ~50% line have upgraded.
Then it will be EXACTLY as I said, with nothing "left out." Any pilot, orig Southwest or orig AirTran, will be able to bid any seat and any base that his or her seniority can hold. No fences, no gates, no limitations, no 20-year whatever-you-were-talking-about. You don't have to drink any Koolaid, but you also can't pretend "facts" that aren't true just to make your bitching seem more pathetic.
I'm sorry you were hoping for an AirTran upgrade in five years, and then found out that it doesn't translate to a Southwest upgrade with your five years of AirTran service. It takes longer than that to upgrade here. And then even a little longer for you, because of the loss of seniority to equate AirTran service with Southwest service, when on the Southwest list.
I'm sorry you're unhappy. We are too. And I DO understand that you think both deals sucked. No one over here likes them either.
Especially not our FOs. It would probably be a fair statement to say that Southwest guys don't want to hear you bitch about how bad the deal is for you, anymore than YOU want to hear Southwest guys bitch about how bad the deal is for them. Know what I mean? Like you said, it's an "individual, personal thing," and it affects us just as much, whether you believe it or not.
Bubba
