Originally Posted by
rickair7777
It's not quite that simple, strict longevity is not the only factor weighted.
It's pretty unlikely that any unemployed pilot will get slotted above an employed pilot, without extreme longevity delta. Even if that did happen, I can just about assure you that any pilots who wind up junior to furloughs will have a carve-out protection to prevent displacement to the street.
"Career expectations" reasonably means that you have an expectation to not have your job handed to somebody at a failing airline.
An arbitrator (Nicolau I think) went through that with the USAir/America West merger. Because of "career expectations" he took the number of pilots flying widebodies (as the other party didn't have any) and put them to the top, and then gave a stripe (someone correct me but I think it was something like 2:1) because the other party was in bankruptcy/might not survive without the merger. So the top guys at AW got hosed, and junior guys at USAir got hosed more.