So a few things here.

First of all, using the numbers on the SLI are not relevant. There were a couple hundred pilots on the SLI who were already retired. Its because of the time from when we got a joint contract to when the SLI was actually done. Also, more than 600 pilots on the list were just placeholders because they weren’t really on the property. They were on various leaves/furloughs/etc. Also we had 2 training centers still, pilot groups flying separately, and other redundancies that have been corrected. We didn’t have 12,155 active pilots. We had much closer to 11,000 - 11,500 total active pilots. Each year, as furloughed pilots came back, pilots from leaves came back, etc the number didn’t change, even though this was a “new pilot” coming back to flying. Just looking at the last number on the SLI isn’t an accurate look at total pilot headcount.

Today we are up about 1,000 pilots in total actual headcount.

I totally get it. Its easy to look just at the total number of pilots. We want to make decisions with as little information as possible. So its just easy to look at the “total seniority list number” and use that as the benchmark, which doesn’t work when you furloughed 1,700 pilots from two airlines, not to mention the hundreds more that were on military leaves, etc.

Just look around. We are a MUCH BIGGER airline than we were at the merger. Its not even close its so obvious.