UCN and Sherpa--
Thank you for the civil discourse, that's rare on these forums. I'll try to address your statements....
I have two good friends at Airtran, one is a senior Captain and one is a senior F/O. I have been in close contact with them throughout the whole process so I very much see this from your point of view. I also know the details of the 3 LEC members of which you spoke.
I agree that SWAPA's initial desire to staple AAI was not good faith bargaining nor was it even a realistic or valid goal. However, AAI's desire for relative seniority was not realistic or valid either. Relative seniority for my Captain friend with 13 years at AAI would put him on the list next to a 21 year Captain at SWA. In our view that was not fair and equitable.
No, I do not believe SWA is entitled to all of AAI's Captain seats. This part of S.L.10 surprised me. What we wanted was to have anyone who can hold Captain on the new system seniority be allowed to upgrade i.e no seat protection for junior AAI Captains. S.L. 9 had 9-10 year SWA F/O's flying with 5 year AAI Captains. In our view that was not fair and equitable.
The crux of this argument lies in how "equal" SWA and AAI really are. I have worked for two lousy carriers and in my opinion SWA is a far superior company than AAI. Please don't take that the wrong way. When you objectively compare pay, benefits, schedules, health care, domiciles etc. there's no comparison. I do not know of a single pilot who has left SWA to work for AAI. Again, I'm not bashing AAI. From SWA's point of view it looks like AAI pilots are gaining so much but they want more.
Believe it or not, radical types aside, most of the pilots at SWA are hoping GK steps up with some sort of good faith gesture when/if the dust settles on this. You are correct, threatening pilots with their jobs is not cool and we are obviously concerned at the potential fallout in the form of a nasty work environment. S.L.9 with some tweaking and your 3 bad apples thrown out of the union probably would have appeased 80% of both sides. That ship has sailed and at this point there's serious risk to either party voting down S.L. 10.
--S.B.