Originally Posted by MatthewAMEL

The 717 will never operate for SWA. The SWA CP was in ATL this week and told us in RGS that no 717 will see SWA paint. That's not 2nd hand. I was there.

Steve Chase has said only pilots flying SWA colors will be represented by SWAPA.

Originally Posted by shoelu

It may not have accelerated anything, but come 2015, there will be no fence to cross. We will all be SWA pilots at that time and ALL on the SWA CBA.

"AirTran pilots are covered by the Southwest/SWAPA CBA upon entering training for service as Southwest pilots. AirTran pilots who have not entered training for service as Southwest pilots by January 1, 2015 will be covered by the SWAPA-Southwest CBA on January 1, 2015."

Originally Posted by SherpaLifter

There are a lot of questions about who transitions when as a result of the B717 going to Delta. The union apparently has heard so many people are "angry as hornets" over yet another gut punch from SWA*, that they robo called everyone at home telling them to remain focused on a safe flying operation and not to be distracted in the cockpit by the announcement. In addition, AT ALPA will have people from the Critical Incident Response Program in the crew lounge in the coming days.

In the mean time, it looks like most AirTran FO's will continue to be on the B scale all the way to 1 Jan 2015, another 2.5 years, while they watch the quality of the lines continue to decline. Then they are looking forward to spending the first 20 years at SWA as FO's before they upgrade (if they are lucky enough to have 20 years left). But at least they have the SWA culture to look forward to.

To recap, you now have an entire airline of 1600 pilots who don't have answers as to when they will transition or what happens to the transition bid. In reality, the SWA ATL base probably disappeared with the announcement and nearly every AirTran pilot will be forced to commute.

*No one thinks the decision to sublease the B717 to Delta is a bad business decision, it's just that the announcement by SWA made no mention of the major, major impact of this decision on the AirTran pilot group. Either GK doesn't realize the scope of the problem or worse, he doesn't care. Even the management types they sent to ATL the day after the announcement admitted they had no answers. They did say that the are realizing that the biggest burden of the merger is being borne by the AirTran pilots. Ya think?

Originally Posted by NuGuy

And don't forget the AT pilots coming with the 717s.

Have you gotten anything in writing about that?

Me either....

Nu