That all sounds good. However, if that would not have any effect on that 18 month thing I keep hearing about in AirTran's contract why would SWAPA be in any hurry to get a SLI done? I would think AirTran would be in a hurry to complete the SLI to get things moving ahead. I believe somebody said that SWAPA can extend the 24 month deal they have. Would the AirTran deal be over if it goes beyond 18 months? If so, can you extend the 18 Months or is the deal dead at the end of the 18 month period? One other thing, after the close of the deal wouldn't all growth and new aircraft go to the SWA side?
Well, I'm not an attorney, nor did I stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night, however, a few general business issues to address in those questions:
1. An 18 month (or 24 month) moratorium "or the deal is dead" doesn't work with publicly-traded companies. On Date Of Corporate Closing (DOCC), Southwest will own AirTran, through its wholly-owned temporary subsidiary (Guadalupe Holdings). There is no way to "undo" that purchase from the shareholder's perspective. Southwest spends the money, there aren't any refunds.
2. SWA *CAN* operate the airlines COMPLETELY separately, but there's no financial incentive to do it (quite an incentive to combine as soon as possible, actually), and the DOT and DOJ approval comes from statements of combined operations. I imagine they'd be under anti-trust scrutiny if they failed to do so, barring some 9/11 event that constituted an "Act of War" or "Act of God". If they DO combine operations, they can't spin off AAI or Guadalupe and must combine the seniority lists per B/M.
3. An extension would have to be agreed upon by the AirTran MEC (18 month), as a side-letter waiving or amending that portion of our CBA.
4. An extension on the SWAPA side (24 month), should that be determined to be the governing ruling (not going to get into that argument again, just discussing the possibility of it being the governing time span), would have to be agreed to by SWAPA. Obviously, if it behooves them to do so in the SLI argument, they might try it, but B/M is pretty specific in that once one side requests arbitration, there's not a huge leeway in time for it to be conducted, so if either side files for arbitration, there's not much either union or either airline's management can do except comply with the arbitrator's requests and decisions, barring some kind of UAir/AWA filing, and we see how well THAT has worked out.
5. My *PERSONAL* belief is that all future deliveries after DOCC will come to the Southwest side of the house. Reason being: there's simply no reason to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to change out interiors and livery with a new delivery; what a waste of money *THAT* would be. Yes, it will likely stagnate the AirTran growth after DOCC as those hulls go to Southwest for the 12-18 months while the companies are integrated, and quite a few SWA F/O's will upgrade sooner than expected out of the deal. Not great for AAI senior F/O's on the cusp of upgrade, especially if it DOES take a while to transition over to SWA pay and work rules, as that's a year and more losing out on CA pay by deliveries going to SWA. Hopefully they'll recoup that money on the back-side of their career earnings after SWA upgrade, present value of money notwithstanding, but we all know there are no guarantees on the future in the aviation world.
Just my personal thoughts on the matter, non-vetted through an attorney or either side's union leadership, so it's worth what you paid for it.
