Originally Posted by
Mesabah
It's career expectations; Losing seniority in a merger is horrifying, ask me how I know..... It's even more horrifying when the person who is going ahead of you makes considerably less, and was always going to make less. ALPA merger policy is broken in this regard, you can't have regionals with mainline in the same union, it simply doesn't work. There is zero chance of the regionals going away so long as ALPA represents us, because every merger will be seen as a seniority grab, even if it's not. Thus ALPA can not even begin to fight to take back any of that flying. They can simply just hold the line, and hope the market eliminates that flying by itself. The problem with this though is the market only appears to be eliminating Delta's regional flying, due to the arrogance of mainline. It's going to be interesting to see what Delta does, but they have already RFP'd a lot of flying, and there are no takers. Meanwhile, hundreds of our guys flock to AA, and UAL's regionals, resetting their longevity in the process.
"You are correct in most of your assertions. The 20 year regional guys would never have accepted a staple and the DAL guys never would have offered more. Yes, the PID failed because of massive egos on the DAL side. No, the PID wasn't a "land grab", it was a request for ALPA to follow its own rules. instead, ALPA chose to change the rules. Never before had two ALPA carriers,
with significant operational integration been acquired by a larger carrier and not merged into the larger carrier, much less each other.
My question to you is why do you feel this is fair? Why do you feel they were inferior to you? You both do the exact same job for the same company. Flying a heavy doesn't make you a better pilot than flying an RJ. In fact, it probably makes you less proficient simply because you fly less."
These are my points with this thread, not to slam DAL/NWA pilots or seek seniority integration with mainline. The system is weighted to heavily to one side and no protection for regional pilots when mainline buys regionals.
"Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely"