Originally Posted by
MinRest
It is a pretty silly argument to make in almost 2025 though. Airlines are flying narrowbody aircraft farther distances than they ever did in those mergers, and the regional footprint is totally different. Domestic airlines don't like like they used to. To say AS pilots never had career expectations to fly widebody is a bit silly since all it takes is a widebody order. I understand that apples to apples, that one airline has widebodies right now and the other doesn't, but can we really make the argument that AS couldn't pivot. Hell, the MAX 10 can carry over 200 people and that is what some widebodies carried. I get and respect the definition of a widebody aircraft and understand legal precedence but the landscape has changed.
I think the notion of a 30 year fence around an airplane owned by an airline in real financial trouble, is insane. How can there be career progession if the airline ceases to exist? The definition of career progession needs to change.
Agree on all points. And yet past precedent is those mergers. And people on here smarter and more experienced in the industry than I seem to think that past precedent is the driving variable of an arbitrators decision making process. In our own experience at our own airline, financial helath was noted in the SLI decision with the VA pilots. Yet it was weighted so lightly that their is large swaths of the seniority list with these huge disparities in TOS. As you said not apples to apples, but a relavent data point.
My OVERARCHING point is that I think the Legacy AS group is fixin' to get hosed in the SLI. Even though the JCBA comes before the SLI, I think we need to vote in the JCBA under the presumption that we are going to get hosed in the SLI. If we don't then its a win-win. If we do, AND get a JCBA that shows all the capital was put into the wide body side of the contract.....sucks to be us. Especially those of us too jr, too old, or uninterested in flying heavier airplanes.
industry LEADING JCBA for narrow body pilots