jsled

[QUOTE=A320fumes;812558]For me, I return make $108/hr as a 6th year 757/767 F/O @ 40% in EWR with 1,300 pilots under me as F/O at a company that hold's to 50 seat Scope and has more than 60 new aircraft on order in the next 3 years; Less than 300 numbers from 737 CA, my position this time last year, on an independant CAL Sr List. I can live with that.

What if it does happen? My Sr list includes 1,441 furloughed guys who think they should rightfully be sr to me because of their great career expectations at UAL.>>>>>




Impossible to predict but barring liver cancer and/or blunt force trauma from a city bus, I am in a good position to take advantage of the 2300+ retirements that will take place in 10 years starting 2013. With 100+ widebodies and orders to replace them, I have a decent chance of spending my last 15 years in FAT city. Now THAT is my idea of "career expectation$$$"!! This merger definetly has the potential to screw that up. But I believe all in all it will be a good thing for the long term job stability of BOTH pilot groups. Time will tell.

Fritzthepilot

Bingo! You just never know.

A320fumes

Good advice! I'll try. I'm actually trying to finish up an Active Duty retirement right now and won't be on property for another 3+ years. Hope to return to a company that resembles a 2000 UAL more than it resembles a 2010 CAL. UAL had a GREAT history before the Bankruptcy Judges, Tilton & CO raped the employees. Godspeed!

Coto Pilot

320 I am a 50 year old 2000 hire United furloughee. I have about 450 furloughees ahead of me and expect that maybe a third would come back on the first call. We have two years until retirements kick in and will have a new better contract with or without a merger. The United pilots are unified in getting improvements in scope and United is on record as saying they will be placing a narrow body order this year, and the industry expects it to include 90 seaters, 70's would be nice, but I am not holding my breath. Without a merger, worst case is I go back in 2 years and eventually retire in the bottom of the top half of the seniority list. With a merger, my expectation is that the new company is going to park the 737-300's and 767-200's that Continental is still flying and furough another 800-1000 pilots. In this scenario, I will be lucky to get recalled before my rights expire in 9.5 years.

A320fumes

Good luck Coto. I hope we use our leverage to get a good contract and scope to get all furloughees back on the property.

Good news is that ALL of the CAL 737-300's have been gone for a couple of months and it's doubtful that the retirement of the 10 767-200's will result in 1,000 furloughs. With or without the merger CAL needs to hire for the 737-8/9's and 787 firm orders being delivered now.

I am a member of the camp that believes that the new flying should be done by OUR, meaning UAL and CAL, furloughees. This merger is pretty much a done deal and I look forward to moving ahead with all of my new UAL brethren after the SLI. Hope this deal gets you back to work sooner than later.

chris1987

I think this merger will be harder to put together than the Delta Northwest. Pilot sen is the key. Relative sen. puts the Cal pilots ways up there. One Airline shrank and one group moved up because of retirements. There will years difference in hire date and age between pilots put together. The guys on the street prob. will go to the bottom of the list. Delta and Northwest had no one on the street.

Ottopilot

Under the old merger policy maybe, but it's been rewritten to take out "relative senority". Interesting timing, no?

A320fumes

If Jeff is smart he'll spend $300 million to give the top 1,500 guys $200k to retire. That would make this siht sandwich more palatable by at least getting all pilots a paycheck. After that relative Sr more closely resembles DAL. Mgt needs to understand that shifting a guys Sr by a decade can be done, but is going to be expensive.

Sink r8

I suspect it might be harder to put together than Smizek and Tilton think, in part because they are not really even paying lip service to the importance of employee agreements. This stuff is coming to the forefront eventually. And the expectations are higher.

With that said, everything else you wrote needs a little review. Both DAL and NW had people on the street, but they were bypasses, so you're mostly right. And there wasn't a big differential between furlough numbers. However, DAL had a number of early retirements, and a lot of movement as a result. By the time of the SLI, there were in fact few pilots left that wouldn't have gone out at Age 60 (when there still was Age 60). Nonetheless, from the NWA perspective, they felt that we had a period of artificial advancement. They had a lot of retirements coming up, and argued that they should be allowed to keep retirements to themselves, through a mechanism called a "dynamic list". Or they wanted DOH +. Needless to say, we wanted a fleet/ratios SLI, because we felt we had better flying.

From my vantage point, our groups were far less similar than yours (except for the furlough differential).

The point isn't to suggest one party was right, but rather that we had some of the same differences that you suggest exist now. Our merger didn't go relatively well because the lists were easy to integrate (they were anything but), but probably because of the tactics of the two MEC's, the willingness of our management to involve labor, and a far worse environment.

Now, you've seen it done once, and you want more, in a better environment. Glenn and Jeff have seen it done too, and it looks like they want to give less. Whereas ours was basically an attempt by two inmates to cooperate with a guard to escape, yours seems more like a marriage between two recently divorced people. People with new jobs, brimming with pride, ego, and great optimism, but not parental concern. There is a bit of confusion about who the daddy is, and the step-children in this new royal family heven't even started to hate each other yet. Expectations are sky-high, but noone's had to pick rooms in the new house yet.

From my perspective, the new United will be a formidable company, but it will up to you guys to get something good out of it. I don't think it'll be easy. Please don't convince yourself that our merger worked because the SLI was easy: it worked because we made tough decisions, and because we engaged management.

Which leads me to wonder why your guys haven't put a little damper on the wedding planning yet. I conclude that you're either far along in negotiations, or you're being taken for granted.

furloughforlife

So, let me get this straight, you will have an active-duty retirement, will end up somewhere pretty decent on the SLI of the biggest, hopefully best airline in the world, and have accessible domiciles only previously available in your wildest, wettest dreams (ref. EWR).

You got some balls to come on here and whine like a little beaaatch. A lot of your contemporaries have had their lives brutalized by the unfortunate turns in this industry. You should consider your audience before crying about things you can't control or even, it appears, begin to understand.

You keep asking for an answer to your thread, but if you haven't figured it out by now, the answer is.........it depends. Uncertainty is the rule in this industry, and some of us got lucky (failing UAL interview in 99 and getting hired by SWA), and some of us didn't (leaving Fedex training for the UAL "dream job" in 00).

Time will tell Fumes, but one thing that is certain, you will whine no matter what happens.

Have a nice career.