Enjoy the gift???? you have been drinking the Kool-Aid served by your negotiating team. The true gift in this whole situation has been all the bids that the CAL side has had for the last 3+ years. Do you really think that aircraft orders create jobs? Getting narrowbodies (whether Airbus or Boeing) would not be an issue for an airline the size of ours (whether we merged with CAL or US). Heck even the vaunted 787 is available. Norwegian airlines just took delivery of their first one and they didn't have any orders for the aircraft until well after Sub UA had the orders.

Where did those jobs come from that you have been the beneficiary of bidding on since the merger? Let’s look at the flying.

In late April of this year I pulled down the entire flight schedule for a day (a Monday) and looked at all the narrow body flying being done of the non-augmented type. (nothing like the opening presentation by the CAL Negotiating Team to motivate me) All of the below information is taken straight from the actual schedule in the computer. If you have some time on your hand you can update it for Sept info by using the FL feature in Unimatic. All CAL and UA flights are available.

What I was interested in was the "shift" in flying between the subsidiaries. IE how much flying was Sub-UA doing on Legacy CAL routes (IAH-EWR for instance) and how much flying was Sub-CAL doing on Legacy UA routes (ORD-SFO for instance) Figuring that without this merger I had no expectation to fly IAH-EWR (or similar flights out of IAH) and the CAL folks had no expectation to fly ORD-SFO. (or similar flights out of ORD)

Here is what it showed

(737 and 757) CAL flying out of:
ORD 340 hours a day (arrivals and departures)
IAD 185 hours a day (arrivals and departures)
DEN 200 hours a day (arrivals and departures)
SFO 350 hours a day (arrivals and departures)
LAX 263 hours a day (arrivals and departures)

(319, 320, 757) UAL flying out of:
IAH 432 hours a day (arrivals and departures)
EWR 249 hours a day (arrivals and departures)
CLE 49 hours a day (arrivals and departures)

When you subtract the flying that UA is doing on CAL routes from the flying that CAL is doing on UA routes you end up with a net benefit to the CAL side of over 600 hours per day!!!!

At 10.5 hours per airplane per day that is 57 airplanes worth of flying!!!!!
at 7 crews per airlplane (a fairly good ballpark for unaugmented manpower planning) that is 400 Captains and 400 First Officers

All of those positions have been filled by Legacy CAL pilots but are being flown on the Legacy United Routes.

The bigger issue is that the airline has not grown by a net of 57 narrowbody airplanes! The actaul net growth is down around 30ish airplanes. So, the 10% downsizing of IAH, that was inevitable based on the economics- see Smisek's comments, has been more than compensated by the available growth on the legacy UAL routes.

The shift in Widebody/Augmented flying back in April was about 80 hours per day in favor of the UA pilots (opposite of the narrowbody). That has dwindled to almost nothing now that the 787 is flying internationally. DEN-NRT, LAX-NRT, LAX-PVG. Additionally virtually all of the growth on the Widebody/augmented CAL routes has been due to UA Slots/Star Alliance slots that most certainly wouldn't have happened without the merger. CAL has gone to 8 Arrivals/Departures a day in/out of LHR, when they were at 3 prior to the merger. They have also increased frequencies to FRA. Even giving CAL the full benefit for those routes, we are now at a virtual "push" on Widebody/augmented flying benefity but you still have the huge benefit that the CAL side has by flying the narrowbody UA routes.


So, while the hours being flown on the UA route system have grown more than enough to have brought all of our furloughed pilots back by now, the reduced hours being flown on the CAL route system has delayed their return. If the merger between CAL and UA had not happened, UA would have merged with US and all of those routes that are being flown today would still be flown. They would just have been available for the UA and US pilots to bid on and not the CAL pilots. The UA furloughed pilots would have all been offered recall long ago to staff that flying. CAL on the other hand would have had just the CAL route system available. As the last 3.5 years have shown, the CAL route system was beyond saturated. (again see Smisek’s comments about the need to shrink IAH by 10% due to so many flights operating at a loss) So, without this merger and the associated access to the UA routes, the bottom of the CAL list was much more likely to be on furlough than anybody on the UA list.

So, the gifts in this process have been the bids that have been handed out to the CAL pilots over the last 3.5 years that are completely due to the UA routes



So, while everyone can argue about career expectations and whether or not the junior guys at CAL are getting a raw deal, keep in mind that what has ACTUALLY happened with the flying supports the argument that UA had a huge potential for growth in their jobs, while CAL did not.

The ISL is done and I don't expect anybody to be happy about it, but using what has happened with bids since the merger started to justify anything (or declare it a windfall or gift) is absolutely ridiculous. Who got the bids is not in dispute, Where the jobs came from that created the need for the bids is what matters. What has happened with the actual flying tells much more about what the career expectations (including furloughees) were of the two parties and where the job creation of the last 3 plus years really came from.