Yes, in this context it is required. If you had read it you would know that a joint contract was required before the SLI could be implemented.

So again, tell me how bad of a contract I should accept in order to give the west pilots their windfall.

Better stock up on the popcorn early as this food fight is about to go big time when the AA pilots enter the arena. Yep just mix in another 8,000 opinions and their feeble APA and this will get real interesting. Wow, what a glaring example of how foolish pilots actually are and how obsolete the "associations" are. Airline managers world wide must love this.

You are avoiding the question Relay and now deflecting. If this person was in the top 500 I fail to grasp what you are getting at. In any event whats your percentage relay yours and yours alone???

I am also so glad you brought up expectations. Pilots were upgrading here at the 7yr mark when EF was hired. Should he have diminished expectation now just because there was a merger?? Did you just not say that east upgrade was running 25yrs?? Why should EF have to wait that long when that was NOT his expectation? Further why should an east pilot with less than 25yrs of non interrupted service leap over a pilot on the west whose expectation was only 7yrs to upgrade?? I can use the very logic you have just used. No east pilot had and expectation of upgrading with less than 25yrs. The really funny part in all this is that you can not hide your overwhelming greed.

WD at AWA

My thoughts as well. It seems a couple people on here have a twisted definition of "fair" and are crying about not getting a DOH integration.

At the the time of the merger, yes you had 7 year up grades and ours was running 20 due to the massive shrinking on our side and the under staffing(go look at the Nic and see the differences in our staffing.) Now, would those numbers stay the same forever? No. Nothing stays the same in this industry for very long. SWA had a long run of quick upgrades, but now even that has ended for them. You have been told over an over that AWA was facing hard times from the guy running it. You can look and see for yourself, you choose not to. You live in a fairy tale world where AWA was kicking A and taking names and that is not the truth.

If your took our seniority lists and ran them out until the last guy retired you would have a general view of what the number or % a guy could reach in his career. For me it was #1, because there was no one younger than me senior to me. With the Nic it would be about #130, depending on how many went out due to death/medical. For those hired after me it was worse. One guy I flew with would be # 4(about the same age as me but hired a couple years later) but would end up in the 700 range. That is a great flattening of his career progression, completely taking him out of the widebody captain range. And who got those positions? West guys. The Nic flattens out east pilot career progression and steepens west pilots. That is a windfall at the expense of east pilots. You might claim it's fair, but you cannot argue it doesn't happen like many west pilots do.

How many AA pilots that are in line to fly the 777 as capt one day would like to see that handed to a US pilot? To be completely removed from the opportunity they brought?

Now, the west argument was that because of the health of US Airways we really didn't have any expectations. And Nicolau bought it. That is flawed and history has shown it. The day we merged the odds of going out of business changed. Parker saw value in US and US already had a large chunk of the cash raised. They were able to put together more money that benefited both companies. We brought the bulk of the assets to the merger. Why should they be handed over to the other group? I think they should be shared and don't agree with people that said you guys should be fenced off the widebodies forever. Again, things change and you guys might have ended up with widebodies. But a guy that was going to retire at 10% on the AWA list was not going to magically make it to the top 3% the way the Nicolau did it for him. A much better % at an airline with better opportunities.

It's sort of like you are about to get hit by a bus, but people yell at you to stop. Had you stepped in front of the bus, you most likely would have died. But events changed and you didn't die. Since you were about to, should you have to give most of your assets to the guy that yelled the loudest?

But unlike Puros above says, that doesn't make DOH fair, at least in the way USAPA presented(IMHO of course). It switches the equation around. The fight over the Nic wasn't about not getting DOH, it was about the windfall the west got with the Nic. Any other number of SLI could have worked better. DOH is what USAPA decided to put forward. But, even with DOH west guys end up with better career progression due to the attrition on the east. You just have to wait for it.

Our merger had a lot of similarities to PA/NA. That arbitrator did it differently. I can't find the whole thing, but here are some points that are from a lawsuit generated by it:

"A second issue, labelled "explosive" by Gill, concerned the manner in which approximately 400 Pan Am pilots on furlough at the time of the merger were to be integrated. This large number of furloughees resulted from Pan Am's switch from smaller planes to B747s, the largest wide-bodied aircraft, and Pan Am's poor financial health in the preceding few years. Gill stated that this furlough situation created"a head-on clash over the relative equities as between large numbers of National airmen hired between 1968 and 1978 and actively employed at the time of the merger, and large numbers of these Pan Am furloughees with earlier dates of hire who still have recall rights but who brought no active jobs to the merger." (Gill Op. at 8).
Gill's solution was to calculate the Pan Am furloughees' length of service at the time of their recall, and to slot them into the list by comparing their length of service with that of the active airmen at that time. (An exception was made for about 34 furloughed Pan Am pilots who had received notice of recall before January 19, 1980). He indicated a willingness, had the parties (or the "JANUS" group, representing the furloughees) submitted a proposal estimating the likely dates of recall of the furloughees and the likely length of service of the active pilots at those dates, to integrate the furloughees on that basis. However, no such proposal was forthcoming "[p]erhaps because of the difficulties in fashioning projections of that nature." Id. at 41. While noting that his solution to the furloughee problem might seem novel, Gill observed that "the problem itself is novel--there has not been any previous merger case called to my attention where such massive numbers of furloughees, with such long periods of being off the property, were pitted against active airmen from the other airline who brought current jobs to the merger."



"Finally, differences between Pan Am and National created further conflicts between the interests of the various union groups. While Pan Am's fleet consisted primarily of B747s, National mostly used the smaller B727s. Although National was in "a healthy financial condition at the time of the merger," Pan Am had been in financial difficulties over the preceding few years. Because of these and other differences, the parties before Gill advocated three different methods for integrating the seniority lists: (1) the National pilots and engineers advocated "ratio" methods; (2) the Pan Am pilots a mixed length of service ("LOS") and date of hire ("DOH") method; and (3) the Pan Am engineers a straight DOH method. Under a ratio method, a certain number of identified airmen from one airline are listed followed by a similar listing of a specified number of airmen from the other airline (e.g., 1 National pilot followed by 3 Pan Am pilots). The ratios can form all or part of a master list. In the latter case the balance of the list can name airmen on an LOS and/or DOH basis."


"Gill concluded that a "fair and equitable" solution required that two integrated seniority lists be constructed by different methods. He constructed the entire Engineer List, and the top and bottom of the Pilot list, by a straight LOS/DOH method. However, for the middle portion of the Pilot List he used a mixed-ratio method, which distributed Pan Am and National pilots in a ratio of approximately 3.25 Pan Am pilots for every one National pilot."


"The Arbitrator concluded that "there are some `substantial practical inequities' in unrestricted operation of straight length of service which ... could not feasibly be cured in workable and readily administrable fashion by special protective provisions." The ratio that the Arbitrator adopted covers a much smaller portion of the list than the National pilots advocated. In rejecting the National pilots' contention that the ratio should extend farther down the list, the Arbitrator explained that the degree of disparity in length of service between Pan Am and National pilots increased farther down the list and thus, extending the ratio as the National pilots sought would, on balance, result in too great a disparity in length of service between Pan Am and National pilots who would be ratioed together at that point in the list. The Arbitrator also noted that even though those National pilots below the ratio portion would not reach their promotion expectancies until long after the Pan Am airmen on the list near them reached theirs, this inequity was offset by the fact that these National pilots were, on average, younger and thus had more time to reach their expectancies."


In every merger there are winners and losers, that is inevitable. But can you show me a merger where so many guys on one side move back so far over the rest of their careers and the other side moves up?

Okay, Puros, I'll give you another chance.

Our transition agreement called for a joint contract to be negotiated before the SLI could be used. It wasn't. The last offer on the table was absurd. The west pilots unripe lawsuit stopped the process as much as anything. What inferior contract should we accept in order to give the west their windfall? What would you accept? A contract that didn't raise E190 rates at all? One with no min fleet or block hour protections? One that would still have you the lowest paid pilots in the nation? Would you really give up the first chance of moving up that you had in years for that?

Ok, now were getting somewhere. So you admit that the LAS closing and possible downsizing of PHX should be subsidised by east pilots??
So it would be perfectly FAIR for your group to exert SUPER seniority on the basis of a flawed award that will be detrimental to a pilot group who's domiciles YOU never intended on holding??
It appears that with the passage of time, Mr. nic has proven beyond all doubt, that his award was FLAWED, PUNITIVE, and UN-FAIR.. This my friend has galvanized our resolve. And WE are prepared to see this thing through the bitter end. You can bet your bourbon on it..
I'll see you in court!!

Still deflecting! I wonder why?? If you dont want to say that you gained or lost only a few percentage points just say that and keep your self respect.

I see you keep talking about Parker said this and Parker said that but what Parker didnt say was that AWA was not in bankruptcy and AAA was! All this other stuff you've posted is just fluff. The arbitration panel took into account all this and much more and then rendered its decision. Now since that time you and the east have engaged in every tactic known to man in order of getting out of that arbitration. Sorry I just dont see where a new Panel will come up and just give the east a do over based solely on the fact that they dont like it.

The new American nor the APA want anything to do this mess but much to their dismay one or both are gonna have to play. Now here is the really good part, cant say to us binding arbitration when we have witnessed for the last 6yrs where binding has not been binding. No harmony will exist until that award is put in place or a court says binding doenst mean binding.

WD at AWA

The courts have spoken. And the only claim your group has is whether you are damaged or not. If Nic were in fact "binding" the courts would have imposed it by now.

I have never deflected. I've told you before that I was about the same relative position on the Nic, when it came out, as I was on the east list. On the previous page I said this:

"The problem for most of the east wasn't the position that they had the day the Nic was produced. For many it was close to the same relative position."

My point, that you ignore or you just flat out can't comprehend is that is only one part of the equation. I lay it out for you, you dribble on the screen. What else can I do?

AA is in Chp 11. Going to tell then they are the Titanic. That you are saving them? Going to Bring up their accidents like you guys love to do with ours?

Beat your chest, stomp your feet, file your lawsuits. Maybe this time it will work, we'll see.

I've shown you data, Parkers opinions, other arbitrators opinions, and all you can do is say "YOU'RE WRONG!" Who is really deflecting?

BTW, I'm going to quote someone from another forum. Have you seen it?

"There is no reason someone with 16 years of active continuous longevity PLUS they come from the airline with far more large aircraft should become equivalent in seniority from the 737 predominate airline that only has 6 or 7 years of longevity."

Seems someone from another airline disagrees with you!