Originally Posted by Herkflyr

If you held an international line as a 2007/8 hire, consider yourself extremely lucky. That was a statistical outlier and far from the historical norm. However, it is human nature to take a snapshot at a moment in time when you are new to an environment, and naturally assume that however things are that very second is how they always have been and always will be. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Here are a couple of other points. ALPA did not "let" the company combine the international and domestic ER categories. The company has always had that ability. As I've said before, there are both pros and cons from both a company and union perspective to combining--or keeping separate--the international and domestic categories. The company has chosen to combine them at this point in time. So what? Every other airline has always done it this way. No conspiracy here.

Also, your point that the company "had to pay double or 1 1/2 times" if they assigned a domestic category trip to an ER category is flawed. Again, the company has ALWAYS had the option of putting any domestic time that they wanted into an international bid package. IF the company in a pinch assigned a domestic category's domestic trip to an ER guy, then there would be some financial penalties to the company--but this was very very rare.

Bottom line is that for decades the international categories were very senior and took a long time to even get into. The 2007/8 new hires that were hired right into the 7ER right seat were one-time aberrations. You cannot have it both ways. You can't say "hey, I was holding a regular international line in year two, and ALPA hosed me out of it" without acknowledging that almost no DAL pilots has EVER been able to say that.