BEcause it will give us the flexibility to use them on ETOPS routes later if the need/desire/oppportunity arises. and.... believe it or not, management is forward thinking because they know it is less expensive to have them ETOPS certified and capable right out of the factory rather than retrofit them later. Smart.

Sorry for my thin skin. Coming from you I should have known it was a joke.. from others here.. meh.. it probably wouldn't have been.

That is the truth. I read rumors from other LCPs that I have never gotten any wind of.. We don't get the big picture any more than any of the rest of the line guys... some of the stuff comes straight from the horse's mouth however, as witnessed at the LCP meeting earlier this week. I am personally going to refrain from writing about it, because as The Manager points out, all the boy scouts are being fed kool aid intraveinously so those anecdotes are meaningless and I wouldn't want to contribute to an out of control rumor mill. I can tell you this much however.. if you are paying attention, and connecting dots.. some of the posts here will really give you a chuckle...

A chuckle as in we're full of crap or right on the money??

Maybe a little of both... depending on the subject. But remember, I am kool aid infused. :)

I agree. You have to look at what RA said, how is said it and what he left out. Then ask yourself, Why do they want an expedited process with the contract if they do not want any part of the AMR action? B6 would be the only other carrier that they could buy in whole and not worry about having to negotiate with their pilots. ALK, HAA, and NKS all are alpa and would require a joint agreement on some level.

Pure speculation as to any players on or off the radar screen. However, your reasons for management wanting an expidited contract are spot on. (However, that is no reason to accept anything less than a phenominal contract) But it gives us flexibility in a very tumultuous industry. I am not gonna say any more on this forum about any of this.

Smart move, and I agree. Great contract no matter what, and especially with consolidation in the air.

Not sure if cables and jackscrews, rigs and jigs are the same or not, but the user interface we get jiggy with looks too different IMHO to make it a common type, even with the 88 glass mock ups as rumored. Short course maybe, but walking off one and flying the other during an ATL 5 concourse 40 minute scheduled plane change (on a Sunday with Chick-fil-A closed...DANG IT!!!) is a bit of a stretch IMO.

http://www.airliners.net/photo/Trans...231/0182820/L/

Unless we dumb it way down like SWA did for their old 737's.

I'm sure there's some degree of similarity with the nuts and bolts of it but most of that will be stuff that hardly ever breaks anyway. Different engines and I would assume different brakes than the 88/90 cause the 95 don't chatter yet I can't see them giving the same stopping power to the 90 and 95 given their difference in weight.

But in any case, if we glass up the 88's I could see a bi-directional short course that could move guys between fleets pretty quickly but I can't immagine the feds signing off on "common fleet" but you never know. Heck maybe they will bring "dual qual" back. Why not, right, since we already train for the next aircraft while still flying the last aircraft anyway. Pffffft.

Maybe, but there is the untested and nebulous "federal merger law" although that could be end rounded because as we all know, "it depends on what the definition of a merger is". Plus they have individual contracts with aparently "strong" language in it, but again its untested and would be very interesting to watch an attempt to enforce.

That said, buying B6 in whole would be insane and potentially disasterous for our pilot group because if there was some way for them to get anywhere close to a relative/ratio integration, we would be absolutely slaughtered, even with widebody fences, based on longevity actuarials. Halfway up the list is around 5 years. Think about that. Then think about the immedtate fallout:

They get a ratio (their 10 year pilots zippered in with our 25-30+ year pilots, their 4 year pilots blended in the list with our 15 year pilots) and then we proceed to divest massive portions of what we just "bought" to appease the regulators. So B6 pilots get a longevity windfall and then the list is shrunk significantly as slots and gates are divested like crazy (likely in a court ordered SWA charity case but maybe with some NK and VX and I'd bet even AA or USAir pre-AA merger thrown in for good measure).

So we run the risk of getting absolutely hammered in the biggest seniority windfall in history (not in our favor) and then we divest much of the new transaction and that excess comes off the new combined list with PM-D pilots far, far below their PM-JB counterparts at all seniority tiers.

If we got B6 we would have to divest a lot anyway. Divesting up front and making it a fragmentation just beyond the thesholds of McCaskill-Bond and the non union contract would be the only way to guarantee a seamless acquisition of the parts we really wanted without slaughtering the DL list if it ever got to arbitration.