Originally Posted by
Fishfreighter
A couple things:
1. No one will know if there's going to be a merger until the day it hits the papers. So all this conversation is completely speculative.
2. Given the recent history of SLI mergers, I'd expect the merger committees to deadlock. And the arbitrator will come up with some kind of widebody fence and ratioed seniority list. DoH hasn't been a factor in list integrations since ALPA dropped it from the Merger/Frag policy years ago. Since both groups are ALPA, the Merger/Frag policy will be the ground rules by law.
Makes sense on both counts, except that I wouldn't count on fences being the key feature of a list. Philosphically, I think fences represent a failure to actually arbitrate, i.e. "...the list doesn't actually work... but if you keep the pilots apart, it feels like it does..."
Anytime you have a fence, you have some that's excluded, and someone who's "in".
They do, however, serve the prupose of helping those who wish a merger wasn't actually happening. I don't mean a merger is coming to our two airline. But if one was, I think fences would serve to give us the impression that we can, somehow, not actually do the hard work of merging, and everything would be OK, as it was before. It's a lovely concept. If nothing ever changed in the respective fleets, noone ever retired, noone ever was hired, no aircraft was parked, and none ordered, fences would work. Everyone would stay on their turf, happy as a clam.
Too bad there is no way for this work: at some point, merged pilot groups mean merged bids, and merged opportunities. Fleets disappear. Others come in. You actually have to make decisions as to how gets the first pick.