Originally Posted by gettinbumped

Wow, calm down! You're freaking out over there! It's very simple. Precedent for arbitration is to consider the merger date for SLI integration. That's 2010 despite what you or your lawyer says. That being the case, pilots will be placed on the seniority list based on what you could hold at that time, NOT now. In the past 3 years, LUAL has lost flying in order to keep the capacity flat for UCH. What that means is that when the list comes down, there will be a lot of LCAL pilots in seats that their 2010 seniority couldn't hold. Period. They will NOT be bumped out of those seats, and will continue to hold those seats out of what their new seniority can hold. That's life, and I don't begrudge those pilots for taking advantage of the situation they have found themselves in for the past 3 years. But for those pilots to think they are getting screwed when put in their RIGHTFUL place on the 2010 list?? Cry me a river.

Factors such as aircraft orders etc become irrelevant after a merger date because management makes decisions based on the COMBINED carrier. For example, the 757's we are parking right now are due to having UCH 737's coming on board to replace them. In a standalone operation, LUAL wouldn't have had those airplanes, so they wouldn't have parked the 757 fleet until they ordered their own narrowbodies. Capacity at both airlines most likely would have been essentially flat, based on the the rest of the industry.

Who knows, maybe the arbitrators will go totally rogue and for some reason consider 2013 to be the appropriate date, decide to staple all UAL pilots at the bottom, and I'll be back with my 19 years to raising gear for a new hire. We will see.