3 way seniority integration-Fire Away
 

Ok, I know this post will draw a lot of fire, but it should make for some interesting replies. Disclosure: I am a mid level narrow body capt at Legacy AA. I was hired between 88 and 92. My seniority is between 2400 and 4000 at LAA. Assumptions: 1. The Nic is not used in the model. My reasoning is a. I lack the knowledge the arbitrator used in fashioning the award. b. enough time has passed that the assumptions the award were based on are no longer valid. c. The two airlines are currently operating under 3 lists. 2. Date of hire is not used, only relative seniority. 3. Credit for Aircraft Orders is based on 50 percent of the order. (this number could be changed, but is a starting point. 4. Group 4 First officer slots are equivalent to group 2 Captain slots. This assumption was made by a previous arbitrator in a Legacy AA case. Further, in DFW the top 60 percent of the 777 FO list could be group 3 (not group 2, but group 3) captains. Group 1 Captains are feathered (slotted) with group 2 First officers. This is based not he fact that a new hire at L US can hold group 1 Captain, and based on the fact that the pay rate is roughly equivalent to Group 2 First officer. Base all ratios on current AAL staffing numbers, because after the transition to SOC, thats what the job opportunities will be based on. 5. No assumption was made about future aircraft retirements, this is moving target and would be difficult to predict the future. The same is applied to aircraft OPTIONS. 6. Specifically date of hire was not looked at due to the disparate hiring cycles of 3 airlines and wide swaths of seniority in each airline list.

So..lets begin..
These numbers are EXAMPLES only, actual integration based on real number.

Take number of Group 4 aircraft from US East, US PHX, LAA
Example East-30, PHX-0, LAA-50
Take number of Group 4 Options and multiply by .5 (assumption)
East-20 PHX-20 (orders are split because of assumption of future ISL.(integrated seniority list). and L AA.60. ..
Multiplied by .5 yields East 10 PHX 10, LAA 30..

Combine and you get East 40, PHX 10, LAA 80.
Start with The largest Group -AA...and ratio based on current manning

EXAMPLE: Start ratio at number one, end ratio at total aircraft (130 in EXAMPLE) multiplied by Group 4 manning. 6 Capts per aircraft times 130 yields 780 Group 4 captain slots ratioed by 8/13, 4/13, 1/13. Start at the top of Each list, AA, US East, PHX.

Next Ratio the Group 3 Aircraft slots the same way, with PHX and US East sharing the Group 3 Orders (times 50 percent)
Use the current LAA staffing level for group 3 Capts.

Next, Ratio the Group 2 Aircraft slots the same way, with one exception. Each Seniority list (PHX, US EAST, and LAA) get credit for Group 4 First officer manning per current aircraft and .5 of orders for Group 2 Captain slots.

Next, Since credit was given to Group 4 First officer slots to Group 2 Captain slots, Ratio the Group 3 First officer slots at current LAA manning levels with credit for .5 times Group 3 orders and again orders split between PHX and US East 50/50.

Next ratio Group 2 First officer lots with Group 1 Capt slots.
With credit for orders where due.

Anyone hired after dec 2013 is slotted by DATE OF HIRE.


Three year fences for Group 4 Aircraft.
Two year fences for Group 3 Aircraft.

No one can be bumped out of their seat. Only preference bidding across fences for two years..This issue would have to be refined.


This proposal gives everyone credit for
1. What they own now and what they are flying now.
2. Their relative position on the seniority list
3. Their career expectations relative to wide body flying and Capt positions.
4. It does not specifically recognize date of hire.


This is an idea that would need modification, but..lets hear some ideas. An arbitrator will probably decide this, but he will listen to our input.

Why do people even try to guess? Just play Monday morning qb when its all said and done.

This is like predicting the weather in Timbuktu on July 14th, 2018. We'll get what we get, whether we like it or not.

New orders are replacement aircraft, and mainline will shrink. Erosion of scope has been the profit model since Orville and Wilbur.

And like everyone says, we will all get what we get in the SLI... Even O&W aren't safe as #1 & #2.

3 way seniority integration-Fire Away
 

Two critiques:

West pilots may not be credited wide body aircraft. I certainly doubt they would be credited more than the ratio of physical bodies in PHX vs East... 3:1

AA on a stand alone basis was shrinking. It's orders were a refresh. Bankruptcy would have forced industry standard outsourcing. Tom Horton announced 400 furloughs. Orders can always be sold, especially in bankruptcy. The US Airways merger reversed this and even upgraded some aircraft orders into lathers variants.

Overall, I enjoyed your insight. Thanks.

Interesting but...
No points for AC orders unless they are purely growth. New replacement aircraft mean zero.

I think they do because the SLI isn't complete yet. It's possible that certain ideas and other methods could be explored and passed on to the merger committees for consideration. Perhaps a few good ideas could be formulated that will indeed shape the construction of the new list.

My post is not a guess. If you read it, it is a suggestion for a way to integrate 3 lists. I am not trying to anticipate the arbitrators award. I am merely suggesting a method for integration that could be presented to the arbitrators, or....forbidden fruit, we solve this without an arbitrator (yes pigs would fly).

As for replacement aircraft, If we agree the A350 and the 787 are replacement for the 767, arent we replacing a group 3 with a group 4?
So the group 4 methodology would still be valid, Also, the .5 ratio for fleet additions could be modded to .2 or .3, or .xx. The methodology is unchanged. Some are replacement.....but its hard to guess which will be and which won't be. Yes, its fleet renewal..but there will be SOME 757 and SOME 767 on the AA side in the foreseeable future. There isn't going to be a brand new 787 doing DFW -HNL and OGG.

Why wouldn't west be credited for the group 3 aircraft (757) that they currently fly now??? Orders could be on a ration between PHX (west) and US east. Wouldn't that be somewhat fair?

Keep making suggestions. A model is only a model, lets wind tunnel test it!

And yes, this idea is for possible suggestions to the SLI committees that will form the SLI.

Thanks for your input...keep 'em coming!

My prediction is that the prevailing thought afterwards will be the other side won.

If 3 separate lists are brought together, everyone seems to agree that it would most likely be the lists that were in effect either on the announcement date or the POR.

With this in mind, in a 3-way combination, is it possible that a pre-AA merger US East new hire (someone hired in 2006-2012) could end up senior to a West pilot hired before the HP/US merger?

Have you sent it to the SLI committee?

3 way seniority integration-Fire Away
 

In the end, the arbitrator is keen on evenly distributing pilots. Both sides (USAPA and APA) can try to appreciate their positions with maximum credits, but the arbitrator will cut through all of this inflation for an award.

Review of the most recent UAL-CAL award is beneficial insight into how Arbitrator Eishen operates.

Only if one holds the HP logic of yesteryear.

Absent Nic, junior west pilots may desire DOH methodology.

Wow, so the potential exists? That could make things interesting.

If you're going to toss the Nic seems to me you'd have to consider 4 lists, pre-merger East and West, US AIR 3rd listers, and pre merger AA.

The so called "Third Listers" are part of the East list, there is no Third Lister List.

My point being that if you just did a hypothetical relative seniority integration of the East and West list, with all the "Third Listers" as part of the East list, the Westies would be justified in being more than a little upset with that. Ultimately Third Listers should be junior to anyone hired prior to the announcement of the East/West Merger.

Why is that necessarily so? Why should someone that can hold 190 CA or 330 FO be put behind someone who can only hold reserve 320 FO?

3 lists means 3 lists.

Not that I support this thinking, but I see this as a big risk for the junior West pilots if they do, in fact, get their own merger committee. Using their own merger logic from the HP/US merger would have them treated exactly the way the 17 year pilot was in the Nic.

May you live in interesting times.

I'm just a regional FO, and I'm willing to be educated on this, but why would someone hired at East or West after the merger announcement have any expectation of being senior to anyone already on property prior to the announcement?

Seems to me that the only reason that the disparities that you mention exist is because of the legal maneuverings that have kept the East and West lists separate.

Oh. No. You. Didnt.

Pretty much the only reason for everything is maneuvering, always. The SLI will meet expectations for about a dozen pilots. Everyone else will grouse about it for decades.

If only twelve guys are happy with the SLI, I'd call it a success. :)

Isn't there more then one arbitrator ?

I don't think any single arbitrator will dominate. In reviewing the UAL-CAL award, Eischen didn't say "I" or "me", but instead along with Kaplan and Nolan said "we" and "our" in summarizing their closing to explain how they crafted their hybrid ISL from the various arguments. Although it's likely that there will be many similarities in our final ISL as the UAL-CAL model, I think the most important thing to glean from that award is THEIR position that "each case turns on its own facts".

Not all new orders at AA are replacement. The order was perhaps 460 aircraft and adding up the S80 and 75/76 fleets, some of those Airbus and 737 orders are indeed for expansion. The 777 orders especially are for expansion along with the 787 (primarily destined for ultra long-haul that are not done by 767 or any other aircraft). Since pre-merger widebody opportunities will likely be a consideration, one could expect the pre-merger fleet plans to be an issue.

The argument for SLI purposes of what mainline (be it AA legacy, East or West) would have done is speculative and it's tough to say how the arbitration PANEL will weigh that component suffice it to say that at least in the UAL-CAL SLI, both the pre-merger situations of the carriers was considered as was fleet composition, which included both orders and options.

Another of the several reasons that inclusion of the Nic complicates the SLI with AA and would require a more complicated offset system such as fences to mitigate that complexity. Again, as per the PA, they are operating on the assumption of a status quo at merger date.

Which perhaps is also ANOTHER reason they may seek a compromise with USAPA. One wonders if they've internally run the possibilities and have determined that they'd risk a worse result with a Nic then without. It could be a case of their own "pyrric victory" of getting something that ultimately cost too high a price for that long awaited victory. In a vacuum with only the East and West in consideration, the Nic is one thing, but with the AA component, it becomes something quite different. The argument by some on the West that a Nic is better for them is based on assumption about how they then might be feathered in with AA pilots and/or what mitigators would apply.

Those are all assumptions.

It seems tough to argue against a result that becomes a "new" Nic, just one that treats the West like the original Nic treated the East. In consideration of that, MAYBE the West is now being very careful about what they ask for ?

How would AA have flown all of those airlines had they furloughed 400 pilots?

You mean "airplanes" ?

Because that claim was simply a clumsily played pre-contract posturing move by Horton. At the very same time Horton was "floating" that possibility (early post bankruptcy in very early 2012), Hale was on record as saying he was exactly that same amount SHORT of pilots for the Summer 2012 schedule. In fact (and not assumption), through the entire bankruptcy and to this day, this carrier is short of pilots in virtually all statuses and that was under both Horton and now Parker. Green trips are rare to non-existent as proof, at least on the AA legacy side.

Not to worry, the arbitration PANEL will correctly evaluate what was reality and what was fiction in the three pre-merger carriers conditions and likely future both absent the merger and with it just as the PANEL did in the UAL-CAL SLI.

You better hope so. A lot of guys said that about George Nicolau, but he missed it by a mile. He didn't consider orders from either side, but I'm sure that's because the east had more on the books.

"In the exercise of caution, we have also constructed the list on a
no-growth basis, using the fleet as it existed on January 1, 2007, and
giving no weight to pre-merger orders except to the extent that any
such additions were in place as of January 1, 2007. Our judgment as to
the fleet is based, not on asserted expectations as both sides urged,
but on reality. Particularly in this day and age, with airline instability a
way of life, it makes little sense to rely on pre-merger projections. This
is especially the case here when the financial picture of both airlines
was less than optimum. A January 1, 2007 list also is a closer
reflection of reality on the merged airline."

You never know what you will get in arbitration and I'll bet everyone is surprised by at least one thing in the outcome.

After all these years the basic reality of going to arbitration is still lost on some people.

When parties agree to arbitration they give thier input, then abide by the decision. Arbitration means you agree to a decision by an outsider.

As a west pilot, I will do what I have always done.

I will abide by the decision, whatever it may be.

I'm going to go way, way out on a limb here. If the west doesn't get their way in the preliminary arbitration, the majority will not just accept it.

For all of us, the good news is that Eischen is on this Board and as he was among the three arbitrators on the UAL-CAL who understood that every integration is different and hinges on its OWN facts and thus so shall this one. Again, we should all expect the goal of maintaining pre-merger career expectations and the avoidance of windfalls to be paramount to meet the fair and equitable standard in crafting our final ISL.

I agree with everything you wrote, it just doesn't always work out that way. Good luck to all of us.

Did they agree to this arbitration or was that decision made for them?

Not really. I would say that it is lack of knowledge of the merger process as it were during the E/W merger.

SLI===>Joint contract===>Independent ratification

vs

Joint Contract (including layout of SLI process)===>independently ratified====>SLI (already ratified)

Se the difference? All of those years of ALPA merger policy and nobody ever exploited the loophole. Somebody was bound to do so, and all it really took was an extremely lopsided arbitration.

Think you will see the AA furloughs at the bottom of this list?
Think you will see the top XXX positions go to one side?
Think you will see fences based on a soon to be changed age limit?

BTW, IMO Parker could have gotten that mess done by offering a Delta contract when it came out, or the new one in 2012. A public leaking of it would have had USAPA pilots surrounding USAPA headquarters with torches and pitchforks.

Did I agree to the Nicolau arbitration? No.

They overwhelming agreed to the process that got us here, the MOU.

3 way seniority integration-Fire Away
 

Eagle, what happened to you between now and the release of our SLI PA. You're so much more reasonable.

And yes I meant airplanes, but my iPhone meant airlines! 😀

3 way seniority integration-Fire Away
 

Did you personally agree to the Nic? No, but your bargaining agent did agree to binding arbitration on your behalf?

I don't know but did the process in the MOU specifically spell out binding arbitration to decide on whether the West get their own independent say in the SLI arbitration? Or did the mechanism in the MOU that allowed the parties to agree to this binding arbitration include the consent of the West's representative (was he over ruled by the majority of East representatives)? If so, I don't see any reasonable person believing that that amounts to agreeing to this binding arbitration but actually see it as others agreeing to this binding arbitration on their behalf, against their will.