Originally Posted by
Toddnel
Looking at this award, there are arguments all throughout as to what is fair and what isn't. This is true of any ISL process and if someone was extremely happy, it definitely wouldn't have been fair.
That said, one thing sticks out to me as a major screw up on the United Merger Committee side of things. The initial proposal for CAL did not ask for any fences whatsoever. The United team asked for a fence on the 747's. This lead to the CAL team asking for 787 fences and then to United adjusting their plan to try and fence 787's in their bases.
The outcome was the new 5 year fence on 787's and 747's or until the 25th airframe is delivered.
Now if I do my math right (using the existing 777 staffing levels as a reference), United gave up the ability to bid over 215 widebody captain and over 500 widebody first officer slots just to hold on to an airplane that was already staffed full with UAL pilots.
There was really no danger of losing a large number of these slots to CAL guys over that 5 year period as there was no flush bid. Now 24 aircraft worth of pilots will be established on aircraft and in base before any openings are available to UAL guys. That mean a fairly large movement in CAL CA's and F/O's in to the widebodies.
Has anyone else looked at this? I would have thought it would be better off had they dropped the fence idea altogether.
Your analysis is correct.
But I wouldn't say the UA side screwed up unless it was to fail to show the arbitrators the very real consequences of not doing both a 747 AND a 787/777 fence.
Imagine if the 747 was a growing fleet and 80% of its routes were going to CAL bases at the exclusion of CAL pilots; the CAL side would be livid. That's what happened here.
The harm and havoc to the United side is significant; and all the arbitrators thought about the C&R was that it's "complicated and overreaching".
I guess math is hard for lawyers.
