Originally Posted by
MaxPowers
Boogie-
AirTran has at least 400 Captains who are junior to SWA FO's. Some of them have been Captains for 5 or 6 years. When you're combining two healthy (nonshrinking) carriers, you don't take a guy out of his seat he's been in for years and give it to an FO at the other airline, that is a "windfall".
If you start displacing guys from the 717, which would happen in your scenario, you're talking about potentially 3 or 4 training events caused by each displaced Captain. A displaced 737 Captain could hold 717, so he bids 717. A displaced 717 Captain becomes a 737 FO. A SWA 737 FO becomes a 717 Capt, etc. Those 400 displacements could trigger a thousand training events, lasting 6 weeks each . . . . Ouch!
Also, If an AirTran Captain is displaced, he is now not receiving SWA Captain pay. Are you going to pay protect him for the difference? No? Going to pay him AAI Captain pay? That is more than SWA FO pay, so are the SWA FO's going to be mad that he is making more per hour than they are? Should they all get raises to AAI Captain pay? How do you even that up?
The above is probably why "no bump, no flush" is pretty standard, along with fences. The AirTran Captains will probably remain in their seats and bases unless they bid out of them.
Again it seems to be a matter of pay vs seat which is what I was saying. So to save all those training costs an alternate idea would be to pay those bypassed SWA FO's Capt pay like some other carriers have in the past to save those training cost. The can have the advantage of pay and good QOL by being senior FO's
Of course management would have to offer that up.