Im an AAI guy, and to be perfectly honest, I would not mind if this entire thing went away. Im a pretty senior FO and this merger is going to hose my upgrade. As it stands now, I get whatever time off I need, get any vacation I need, and my quality of life is amazing. I averaged 17 days off last year and live very comfortbaly with my AAI pay... What do I want out of the merger? I want to keep my quality of life about the same. Relative seniority would do that. However, I also understand that we will be getting a pay raise, so we need to give somewhere. You need to remember that AAI was still growing, uprgrading, and hiring. Our career expectations were much faster then the guys at SWA. I think most AAI guys would be willing to give up "some" relative seniority. That would boost the seniority of EVER SWA pilot on property. Not only that, SWA is now growing, hiring, and taking AAI airplanes. All of those things help the SWA pilot group. Its not like you aren't gaining anything out of this merger. YOUR ARE. However, your contract isn't good enough for SWA pilots to get a windfall with seniority. SWA 8 year pay is $10/hr less then AAI's, and 9 year pay is $13/hr less then AAI. IVe said it before, if everyone comes to the table with a level head, this will work great, but if any one pilot group comes looking for a windfall, its going to get ugly. What your union is telling you about wages is very misleading. Yes, your average FO rate is probably $40 grand a year more then the average AAI FO, but the average SWA FO has also been at SWA a much longer then AAI. If you compare years of service, then that amount is much less, and in some cases, SWA is behind AAI.
