Bucking Bar

New, not trying to pick a fight, because it is what it is. But all the same, we aren't flying together right now so I'll just call it as I see it - and I'll still buy you a beer if you disagree, I don't care.

No, the additional 3-4% does not make that GREAT a difference. The great difference is that category and status were ignored. Particularly at the bottom of the list at Delta. At the time of the merger I was a line holding 767 FO, then merged with NWA pilots on furlough bypass and those flying DC9's out of Detroit. Is that status quo? Would NWA pilots have bypassed a line on a 767 in their home town? Of course not, I'm merged with people who's job sucked so bad they did not want to return to it and frankly, if they don't want to do their job, why should I be happy about being displaced into a job I never applied for?

Now that we are on the same list, the previously unprecedented award is a threat to you and me, equally, in the next merger. Imagine if you will the results of an Alaska merger, where category and status are ignored. Now credit them now for future attrition and see what that does relative to your current position on the list, regardless of where you are at. While we are talking numbers, Do you like Apples? How you like them Apples ?

Frankly, I'm still not sure I'll be around long after SOC anyway. The merger is a 5 to 8 year set back and I'm just too old to wait it out like Superpilot92 and his generation. I'd already be gone, but the market for corporate pilots is a lot worse than it was. Still, there might be the left seat of a Gulfstream in my not too distant future. I'm not being critical, it is just that I did not apply for a job at Northwest Airlines, not what I wanted to do. The pay is better now, so we'll see, but I don't love Delta so much that I'd move to Detroit or Minnesota to stay on board and I'll not commute. Easier and more profitable to just go do something else, get a considerable pay raise and tell my kids - "yeah, I did that once."