percentage isnt bs. the number one mistake pilots make is look at their doh and cling to that like their first born child. doh in mergers becomes largely irrelevant. it all ends up being category and class, longevity, and career expectations. your assumption that doh is fair only works when both pilot groups are relatively the same age, longevity, with similar hiring sprees and likewise spread among pilots for widebody and narrowbody. in the end percentages matter. you are right that the number one virgin guy won't go next to the number one alaska. most likely the arbitrators will give alaska a decent preference in the sli because of much higher longevity. you might see something like the first 200 positions on the list are all alaska pilots. the next 200 positions are the first 50 virgin and the next 150 alaska guys with a ratio starting with an alaska guy, and the next 300 positions are the next 200 alaska guys and 100 virgin guys, starting with an alaska guy. so on so forth

there is no doubt that this is an extremely tough merger for two main reasons. both groups have same career expectation of narrowbody captain. it would be a lot easier if alaska had widebodies but as it stands narrowbody domestic captain is the career expectation of all. and the biggest factor of course is the skewed longevity with a much more senior group from an airline that has been around for many decades versus one that has been flying around for just about 9 years.