How is that a blatent falsehood? Your group was offered ALL of your capt seats, and pay parity, starting day one, or close to it... I forget the exact date, since I've ram dumped that ridiculous deal from my mind. Your MEC turned that down and never even let it get to a vote.
Ah, I gotcha. You were referring to SIA 1. Sounded like from your post that you were talking about us giving up all that from the beginning of talks for SIA 2 and we didn't.
That doesn't mean that many weren't harmed for a long time, if not permanently. Our -3/+1 monthly vacancy model is killing the MCO guys with the acquisition (it was bad enough before), and they aren't getting an 80%+ pay raise to help ease the pain. Temporary? We'll see, but being forced to commute for many years, when you otherwise wouldn't have, is harm.
Like I said, they can look to their own union on that one. SWAPA negotiated to capture all the 737 CA seats as part of the deal, knowing that would make our senior 737 CA's F/O's who would be senior to all of your guys and the list would shuffle people from base to base.
Commuting instead of living in base sucks, I would LOVE to live in base, but I still think that's temporary, and those guys can look to your own union on that one, it's certainly not our fault.
My entire point to Ty was that there is plenty of pain on our side of the fence too.
You accuse us of not being able to see your side, yet are obviously blind to our issues (or at least won't acknowledge them).
Oh I acknowledge them, don't get me wrong, I've said plenty of times there's plenty of pain to go around. I just see it temporary for more of the OSW people than not and permanent for us because of our permanent position on the list being so much less that we were here. See my post above, for some of us the pain is measured in DECADES and we NEVER retire at the same percentage of the seniority list which equals quality of life issues FOREVER.
Everyone will feel it (except the guys at the top of the OSW list including former-Morris guys). SWA and AAI alike.
Slightly better "global" seniority for the majority of SW pilots doesn't make up for the rest, especially when you consider that we bought an airline, are dumping 2/3 of the fleet, and keeping all of the employees, many of whom were placed in front of our guys.
And getting accelerated 737 deliveries in place of those, many of which were OUR delivery slots we brought with us to the game. Again, you get better global seniority by retirement at the expense of our pilots living with reduced global seniority for our entire careers. That's not the way a fair merger integration is supposed to work. Fair usually means equal benefit/pain. That's not the case here.
If this was such a windfall for our guys, then why the hell is everyone over here so pissed off about it, and have been since the 9/27 announcement.
Because, quite honestly, you guys had a VERY skewed perception of how A/M mergers work, a perception fostered by SWAPA and Management and that's my point, as shown by:
According to the FI brain trust, we should be dancing in the streets over the windfall we've gotten at the AT folks expense, yet that is not remotely the case.
Because you're not looking at it from the standpoint of what is STANDARD AND CUSTOMARY in the Aviation Industry in the last decade of acquisitions and mergers.
NEVER BEFORE since A/M has a PROFITABLE and GROWING airline being acquired/merged lost ALL of their CA seats and had 1/3 of their pilots stapled. It just doesn't happen.
Because your pilots don't care about history or other airline mergers, you can't see how YOUR MANAGEMENT TEAM PROTECTED YOU. Because of that viewpoint some of your pilots lack the ability to see what the REST of the industry has done and what likely WOULD have happened in arbitration: a DoH list or at the very least a better integration by at least half if not better than the 6.5:1 this worked out to.
Hell, look at PCL/MSA/CLG. Colgan was a BARELY profitable airline 1/4 the size of PCL and/or MSA flying turboprops, not even similar equipment, with dramatically different income expectations of the pilots, yet the arbitration award was a relative seniority hybrid that yielded BETTER than DoH for the much-lesser paid CLG pilots. THIS is what likely would have happened if your management team had just stayed out of it and let it go to arbitration then merged the lists in accordance with 6.A of the Process Agreement.
Until your guys can look at it from that perspective, No, I don't expect you guys to be happy with the outcome and for those who can, they will still wish they had stayed stand-alone and grown organically. That's why your people are unhappy.
FWIW, I've flown with several AT guys in the last few months, and every one of them, particularly the FOs, were very happy to ecstatic about being at SW. Even the 8 year Capt. finally admitted that he made more $$$ at SW as an FO, working less than he ever did on the other side. Flying with the AT guys (so far) is like the old days when I got to fly with a lot of new hires. Great attitudes and an overall "lighter", dare I say, "fun" atmosphere in the cockpit than with my RSW bros of late. That, to me, says it all.......
Oh, and I notice that the troll hasn't attempted to refute my post on Delta's idea of acceptable pay parity timelines.....
LOL - history is history. He wasn't at Delta at the time but your post about those timelines is accurate.
That said, I'm glad guys are having fun over there. It's interesting as I watch the bid awards of who comes over and who stays at AAI and bypasses. A LOT of the people bypassing are people who wanted it to go to Arbitration and are still irritated, so you're getting the people who really want to be there, and that's a good thing.
Some of us bypass for other reasons (my fiance' lives with me and makes 3 times what I do so I want the QoL over the money - we don't "need" it), but by and large, the names I see at the top of the list, especially bypassing CA's I fly with, are still pi$$ed. You're getting the people who are happy to be there right now and I'm glad you guys are enjoying it. :beer:
As time goes by and people get past it, they rest will come over and I'm sure everyone will get along. Some people just take longer to move past what they lost and come to recognize and appreciate what they will gain in contrast, accept it, and find their happy place. Me included.
