Truth in advertising: I'm a SWA FO. I stand to lose a heck of a lot if this SLI goes astray.

Someone on another forum suggested merging lists at current levels of pay. Never thought about it but that might be more fair than some of the other ideas I've seen thrown around.

Some issues to think about in an SLI:

a. SWA has a fair number of guys who left Airtran to come to SWA. Any idea how many guys left SWA to go to Airtran? I don't know the answer, but I'm very curious.

b. Airtran pilots are for the most part younger than SWA. They will (on average) get to enjoy/exercise whatever seniority they get for (on average) longer than SWA

c. Everyone at SWA bought a type rating with their own money. Whether you believe in this practice or not, that money is spent, and the SWA pilots are going to want something for it.

d. For ANY SWA FO, realtive seniority or DOH with Airtran will result in a decrease in expectations. I doubt you could find a single SWA FO that wouldn't fight tooth and nail against either one of those methods.

e. For an Airtran guy, if the deal was 1. increase to SWA pay/work rules 2. relative OR DOH seniority 3. Ability to bid to 5x more domiciles...I'd call that a windfall, all at the expense of SWAPA pilots. I don't think A/M or B/M or any other law/arbitrator would support that