Patriot, pasted from an old post of mine (based on age 60):
Based on the 7 July 06 seniority list; a total of 8655 pilots on the list
2006 141
2007 263
2008 234
2009 231
2010 201
2011 167
2012 228
2013 245
2014 237
2015 270
2016 331
2017 307
2018 381
2019 355
2020 463
2021 506
2022 506
2023 575
2024 574
2025 538
2026 560
2027 408
2028 300
2029 226
2030 153
These numbers will decrease once all recalls are complete, since some will not be returning to United. Of course, the overall seniority list also shrinks.
That's where the tweaks come in. You can't merely say relative seniority.
As far as the Continental pilots as an average group, they are likely younger than United pilots. Continental's done a lot of hiring in the last three years while United has only hired ~3% of the current list over the last six years.
There are a whole lot of factors that go into seniority integration; it's not going to be simply a deal of you're 60% now and you'll be 60% after.
You bring up one issue; there's also the percentage of widebodies.
UAL's fleet - 460
747 - 30 (6.5%)
777 - 52 (11.3%)
767 - 35 (7.6%)
757 - 97 (21.1%)
737/320 - 246 (53.5%)
CAL's fleet - 365
777 - 20 (5.5%)
767 - 26 (7.1%)
757 - 58 (15.9%)
737 - 261 (71.5%)
Most of United's retirements will be occurring on the widebody fleets. Continental's retirements will also come from the widebodies, but will also have a good number of retirements from the 757 and 737 fleets.
The details - tweaks - are going to be the issues where both sides will be ticked off forever. This is why no one is ever happy with an integration of seniority lists. They cherry pick the items that are unique to their company and place a ton of emphasis on that issue. That's where the arbitrator comes in. He'll determine the relative importance of upcoming retirements, fleet composition, etc.
If everyone were to be ticked off, it'd be a fair integration.
Now, if there was $1 Billion on the table for the pilots, as is rumored of the DAL/NWA merge, there'd be a LOT more incentive to hammer these issues out without going to arbitration. Nearly impossible, but $100K/pilot's a pretty big incentive to drop domiciles/retirements/fleet composition/quality of management issues and reach a mutually agreeable deal.
