Originally Posted by atpcliff

Yes, it is. The McCaskill-Bond legislation was written in RESPONSE to the AA/TWA debacle, to prevent such a recurrence. One of the things it does is protect all the employee groups in a merger: If one side believes they are getting screwed by the seniority integration, all they have to do is say they want arbitration...then the seniority integration goes to an arbiter and they decide the integration. From what 1224 says, the integration has already been agreed to by both the Atlas and Southern MECs.



DHL chose Southern for the 28 737 for CVG domestic hub ops. They were the cheapest (ABX turned DHL down, then ATI accepted the DHL offer with a decent 737 contract. DHL then went to Southern as they offered much cheaper). Southern was SO cheap, in fact, they can't staff the planes. They have 5? operating 737s, because they can't get the pilots to staff any more.

I would not be surprised if this was one of the factors that created this merger. Southern couldn't do the 737 operation, so DHL came to Atlas to buy Southern, so that Atlas could fix the situation and hopefully get the 737s up and running. Keeping Southern separate would do NOTHING to fix the 737 manning problems.

BUT, we are having problems staffing the 767 because the 767 T&Cs are relatively low: I think it will be difficult for Atlas, also, to get the pilots to staff the 28 737s unless we improve our 737 T&Cs.

Namaste...