Originally Posted by
mooney
however, they were told (by many of the same people that now criticize them) "shoot for the stars or you don't represent me!" Every committee did what they thought was right for THEIR airline, this was not a "welcome aboard, neighbor" meeting. If the 9e comittee had shot for DOH there would be just as many 9e guys PO'd at them as there are now, it is a thankless job that puts you between a rock and a hard place. And many of the mid guys would feel even more "screwed" that there would be twice as many XJ guys in front of them. How many 10 year XJ guys got stuck behind 5 year 9e guys? buttloads that would be in front of them with DOH. DOH would have PO'd the entire colgan group, 75% of the 9e group and none of the XJ group. Think we would have been asking for 9e merger committee heads to roll then?
First of, you cannot shoot for the moon in front of a neutral arbitrator. You have to be somewhat reasonable. The other two groups were completely reasonable from they were coming from. 9E was not. DOH would be a much better pill for everyone. It would have been easier to swallow even back then. I know I would have done at least 150-200 better. More importantly, you wouldn't have disparities with a 2008 Colgan holding RJ Captain while a 2007 9E pilot is left with nothing. As for the rest, DOH for our regionals would have been the most fairest method. Both XJ and 9E were very similar in terms of being around since the 80s or earlier. It's true XJ had the more senior group, but at least they had a flow and were having guys go to Delta. It would have created some movement. For Colgan, they knew they were screwed ever since the Feb 2009 crash. A regional cannot screw up that bad and still expect to be around. I don't think DOH would have POed 75% of the 9E group. All of the 9E FOs would have done better with DOH, because then the Colgan disparity wouldn't exist. 9E FOs make up ~ 50% of the 9E pilot group, so at worst 50% of the 9E group (CA side) would have been negatively affected by DOH. And lets be honest, it *is* BS that a 2000 or 2001 XJ pilot is behind a 2006 9E or 2007 Colgan guy. That is wrong.