Originally Posted by sailingfun

Your understanding of how the trips were combined is wrong. The company could always place domestic flying in the international categories. In fact they were doing it all the way back to the start of the NYC ER category in the early 90's every winter to counter the loss of flying to Europe. There was no extra pay ever for domestic trips placed in any international category bid package. There were issues that kept the company from doing it on a large scale with publications ect.. but nothing contractual.
The new hires who went into NYC were out of seniority as you know. There were I believe the bottom 90 copilots. We keep about 60 reserves so there were some that held lines. I flew all Europe in that time period and never had a new hire on a trip unless he was a reserve. I guess perhaps you mean GEO or some of those trips by international.