Originally Posted by rickair7777

There's no reason at all that any pilot GROUP at a non-broke airline would want a merger with any airline, especially one with poor economic prospects... the acquired pilot group will get seniority, but then everybody will get to suffer equally from the inevitable housecleaning and "synergies".

*Individual* pilots might want a merger, if they live in a certain base, or are very young and might benefit long-term from expanded network, fleet types, etc.

And certainly no pilot is obligated in any way to "desire" or "advocate" for mergers with broke airlines, for the purpose of sharing your seniority and economic prospects with the less fortunate. Everybody has known for 15+ which four airlines (five if you count AS and just want job security) would have the best career prospects, if it was that important you should have pursued one of them (almost *anybody* could have for a few years).

If you game plan was to camp out at second/third tier airline, build seniority and hope it would transfer to a legacy someday... well that's risky business.

Not that it matters anyway, pilot groups almost never have a say in mergers. The rare cases where we might have a say due to the need to relax scope, I would expect the group in question to play hard-ball and protect their interests by getting something valuable in exchange.