Trying to predict when people are going to retire is a losing business. I wish I had a dollar for every captain that told me he was going to retire at 60 or earlier. Since they are able to drop down to zero whenever they want to (if reserve coverage is good), I'm amazed when anyone goes before they are forced to.

Heyas Bar,

Agree.

If a true category merge was done, you'd have senior ALK pilots taking %50 seniority hits, which would be pretty indefensible to the layman.

Straight ratio would play out as you described.

You'd need 25 year fences to make it play out right, or really strong quotas (technically, NWA/REP was a quota system, not a fence) and if that's the case, you might as well go DOH for the methodology.

Ugly all around.

I'd rather see HI also. WB flying, a HND slot and get the 717s on the property.

Nu

What attrition?

Didn't get the memo yet? Congratulations anyway!

This rings sadly of the NWA/Republic merger. I really don't want to go down THAT road, but unfortunately it would be nothing close to a merger of equals. And even if this ever happens, I still think the ploy of "super premium" was the stupidest thing I ever heard. Simply "widebody" would suffice in this case.

this^^^^^^^^^ well said young man!

Huh, wha??????

One of the blurbs that addresses this may be Dickson's letter on the latest AE. I think he said we wouldn't be backfilling some narrowbody F/O position because they were learning to make more efficient (for them...) rotations. Considering some of the selling of the merger involved the idea that staffing would have to be increased by having you go to the new work-rules... I'd have to agree some of the math is funny. For starters, analysts want to hear we're keeping capacity down, and pilots want to hear staffing is going up. Takes a lot of real smooth talking, and a lot of fancy math to explain both.

Then there is the slight problem of the 747-200 and DC-9's going, along with airplanes going to the desert, to be pulled out later, where the rate of airplanes going from the desert is going towards infinity, while the rate of aircraft coming from the desert is also mind-numbing, but few people have found rattlesnakes while doing preflights. So there is some confusing desert math (super-dry), and also some funny Chinese math, and who wants to do MD-90 math with the Chinese anyway? 16 airplanes promised for four years + 1 in the paint shop every week for four years X 1 being ferried across monthly = 0 line pilots in an actual a Chinese aircraft. Remember the scene in Airport (I think 77) where Dean Martin tries to explain to the kid how a star went fron one side of the aircraft to the other, but they didn't do a 180? That's another kind of math we're talking about: spacial math from Uranus.

There is of course another area of this math that explains the fact we don't need as many as we thought before and after, which is a lot less funny, and it revives the SLI wounds. So while I'm not super-happy about some of the fuzzy math that's being blown around here lately, it's at least good there is still a job for everyone post-merger, and a few more to boot. That'll work for me.

Retirement age has been lowered to 45. Can I borrow your epaulets?

The nice answer would be that capacity is holding steady (i.e. not growing to over capacity) because flying is being shifted from regionals to mainline.

Also, that while nobody is in a Chinese MD90, yet, that if whatever the issue is gets resolved quickly then they'll flood in.

but hey, puff puff pass... PUFF PUFF PASS... :D