Originally Posted by
rjcaptsean
The E-175 program sounds a lot like the Desert Sun issue we had a while back. Risley handpicked the guys to go fly those Fokkers and operated it as a different company (so they were essentially off the seniority list). Then when it failed, he brought them all back without a loss of seniority. Didn't they do that again with Freedom Air? Was there any action taken by ALPA for the seniority issues?
Desert Sun happened just before Mesa was forced to combine all of the different pilot groups into one seniority list. (Florida Gulf, Crown/Liberty, Air Midwest, Desert Sun and Mountain West -which was what Mesa's name was changed to for a short while.) All of the Desert Sun pilots had originally come from the different pilot groups.
When it came time for seniority list integration, Desert Sun was looked at as a separate carrier, and its pilot group was subject to ALPA merger policy. The result was that some of those "page one" Desert Sun pilots lost a significant amount of seniority.
When it came time to staff Freedom, Ornstein had learned his lesson from the Desert Sun massacre. Freedom was always meant to be a negotiations pawn held over MAG pilots' heads during Section 6. Both Ornstein and the pilots knew that there was a chance that Freedom would get folded back into Mesa. Having been burned once before, the Friends-of-Larry/Jonathan struck a deal. The on-property pilots who were chosen to staff the non-union whipsaw outfit were allowed to keep their seniority numbers at Mesa.
It was a win-win for the A-listers.
Hog
(If this has already been covered, I apologize for the repeat. I didn't read the intervening 15 pages to look for a similar reply.)