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Old 02-12-2008, 04:01 PM
  #9  
FliFast
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Joined APC: Dec 2006
Position: I was acquired, Not Hired
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Originally Posted by Wheels up View Post
Anyone who's company is mentioned in the same breath as AA, should be afraid. Very afraid. AA management has a hideous record of acquiring other companies. The APA knows this and must be rabid about protecting itself. It's not management that suffers when mergers and acquisitions are badly done, it's the APA membership. Even at the time, and especially in retrospect, the APA should have fought the TWA acquisition harder. APA and TWA pilots would be better off now if TWA was allowed to continue towards its own destiny.

Letter of thanks for the debacle can be sent to Don Carty, Gerald Arpey and all the other lemmings in Centerport with the big heads.
Actually AMR was brilliant in it's acquistion of TWA. Eliminated a competitor, albeit a small one, cemented a divide and conquer strategy between the 2400 TWA pilots and the 10,000 NAAtive pilots, was able to get a 23% paycut with 2900 pilots on furlough, and able to award their managers over 50 million in bonuses. I'm not even sure the Wharton School of Business can beat this case study.

When you allow a union "carte blanche" to integrate another pilot group (APA carrier vs an ALPA carrier) you will get an extermination of the smaller group. This, IMHO is why AA has not been mentioned AND why Congress has stepped into a Deregulated industry and made regulations.

No one will ever know what would have happened if TWA had selected Boeing (just like Continental) as a bailout suitor or if selling their soul back to Satan-Carl Icahn would have resulted in a different ending to TWA. Don Carty and AMR offered to acquire TWA and preserve jobs. Out of 24,000, only 1,800 were saved, mostly because the NAAtive unions on the property stapled all TWA employees at the bottom of the trash can, and some of them with limited (5yr) recall rights.

But from their arrogant handling of the TWA pilot group it is empirically proven that the APA more than, did the job.

Finally, how did the APA membership suffer, that's one that ranks up there with my favorite quote, "The TWA pilots screwed us NAAtive pilots". Not even my man-diapers stopped what happened after I laughed at this one.

I love to read opinions about TWA, unfortunately many are flawed with slants and non-factual posts....."the APA membership suffered"...haaaaaa, good one. American Airlines furloughes after 9/11 barely went into NAAtives hired 12 months prior to 9/11, research all the other legacy carriers and see how many years their furloughs went...3-7 years.

Unfortunately, on the TWA side furloughes went to pilots hired in 1988/1989.

In summary, don't kid yourself that the APA is anyone's friend and thus the lack of dance partners. The only bright spot is that hopefully with the latest round of mergers, that American will no longer be the big fish and in time some one will buy American and staple their pilots to the bottom. Of course, the TWA pilots will be stapled a second time, but when you times 20 years of service x 0 credit, you still get zero. So the NAAtives will be more hurt by a staple than the TWA pilots.

Would you like to know how we really feel about the APA ???

Just ask,

FF
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