Nicolau used about every method known to man.

The top 517 went to the east, to protect widebody flying even though we didn't have 517 widebody captains. The 517 was the number of every pilot on the widebody fleet, so guys that couldn't hold widebody captain got super seniority over the top west pilots.

Next, he took pilots listed as furloughed in 2005(even though about 300 were flying under the US Airways certificate at Mid Atlantic) and stapled them to the bottom, even though he used the seniority list from 2007 because it "better reflected the merged airline", Nicolau's words.

In between it was slotting, but ended up pretty much 1 for 1.

The problem for most of the east wasn't the position that they had the day the Nic was produced. For many it was close to the same relative position. The problem was that now most would never see their unmerged movement because the west was, on average, younger and now the massive amount of attrition that was about to hit the east would go, in large part, to the west.

By the end of 2007 a larger part of the west would be making huge gains in relative position vs. what they could achieve unmerged. Right now only about the bottom 10% of west pilots wouldn't be in the 737 and greater captain range. That takes about 25 years LOS to hold on the east.All of them would be in the e190 capt range and widebody F/O range.

Since the age 60 rule changed, there were no fences.

Guys that didn't have much expectation of flying widebody could step right into it.

This explains it well:

http://www.planebusiness.com/planebu...cusairways.pdf

ALPA merger policy called for avoiding windfalls at the expense of the other side. The Nicolau award clearly failed at that.