I think (at least I hope) everyone here knows the difference. My comment was to the guys saying they will not loose one Captain seat (which is akin to saying Relative "Seniority").
One of the poor things with conversing in forums, is sometimes intent is lost. Can't readily convey body language, ...
Indeed...that and internet forums tends to bring the ****************************** out in people that they'd never expose in reality. But I digress...
Recognizing that seniority isn't the same as longevity, why then would it be untenable that a 6 year AirTran captain keeps his Captain position and an 11 year Southwest FO keeps his First Officer position?
Did the AirTran captain not "bring his seat" to the merger, as the SWA first officer brought his seat to the merger?
Seems to me, as an outside observer who got to listen to AAA guys bitch about the Nicholau decision on the jumpseat for 2 years, that there have been
some SWA pilots claim AirTran brings nothing to this merger. However, its quite clear that AirTran pilots are bringing Captain positions with them to a merger - Captain positions that
some SWA pilots apparently feel they are entitled to, and Captain positions that they otherwise would not have available for some time at Southwest's recent & projected rate of growth & attrition.
Some SWA pilots rationalize it that position by talking about the massive contract improvement AirTran pilots would get even from their new TA to the existing SWA CBA (even comparing AT CA to SWA FO), and while that may be true, it doesn't change the fact that pilots with more longevity at Airline A attempting to take captains positions away from pilots with more seniority at Airline B is essentially a land grab - or, perhaps a more accurate way to describe it, seizure by imminent domain where market price is paid to those who had something they didn't want to relinquish forcibly taken from them.
Just throwing this out there for folks to think about: what would be the harm to current Southwest pilots in stapling AT captains the bottom of SWA's captain list, and stapling AT FOs to the bottom of SWA's FO list? With this, everybody would keep the position they brought to the merger, would keep their longevity for pay, and SWA FOs would get the captain positions created by all attrition & growth, with the most junior SWA FO having an opportunity to upgrade before the most senior AT FO.
Sure, with the above there would be "winners" and "losers" (like there are in any SLI)...but it preserves the seats of existing AirTran CAs, gives existing SWA FOs first crack at all future captain positions, and allows AirTran FOs a substantial raise in pay to compensate for their upgrade being below all existing SWA FOs.
So, both sides - how out to lunch am I?
