The problem with Slaphappy is that he has a lot of growing up to do. He's probably 20-22 yrs old and has probably been in this industry less than six months and has been drinking some major kool-aid. The problem is that he thinks his airline is infallible and God's gift to aviation. Keep this in mind....we are all regional pilots working for regional airlines. Today's gem is tomorrows' turd. Karma is a b!tch and hard times fall on everyone in this industry sooner or later.

Keep in mind that it was JA who made the deal contingent on XJT ALPA making the Holding Letter null and void. Its he who is asking for something. Not the other way around.

i don't really understand this sort of idea. i know xjet has a lot of pilots, so i won't imagine that most or all feel the way you do, just like i hope everyone out there knows slaphappy is not speaking for even a small minority of skywest pilots. but i don't get this. if you like skywest's bases so much, why didn't you work for skywest? if you're the company being bought, it seems odd to say, "yeah, we'll let you buy us if you let us fly at your bases". that's not really how the business world works. i do hope that there is a good outcome to everything for xjet's pilots, because i always hope everyone does well on a personal level. but when you're at the company that is a takeover target, there are a lot of bad things that can happen. if (and it's a big if) xjet is going to get bought anytime soon, xjet pilots should hope that it is skywest that does the buying. there are plenty of buyout shops out there (not in the airline business) that would love to take xjet private, gut it, and either get their money out of it piece by piece or put it back public after transforming it down to a mere shadow of what it is now. i'd be looking at that sort of eventuality if i were you. again, just from a business standpoint, not the "my airline is better than yours" playground mentality that goes on a lot here.

Slaphappy probably prays to a statue of JA at the end of the day. :D

Just curious, XJT contract is with Expressjet holdings, what happens if SKW buys XJT and Expressjet holdings is no more? I know about the MEC metting today and trying to neg. something.....but didn't the same thing happen with AA and TWA with only 10% of TWA merged.

Our contract states whoever our "holding company" is has to merge us with anyone else they have under them that flies 19 seaters or bigger. Which is the way it should be, no more whipsawing!

We would merge our seniority lists based on hire. It's not like our companies have different career goals.


I don't like any of the Skywest bases better. I like our Delta LAX base better. I don't want to see Skywest buy us and then take that base away. I find it very strange that I would have to start over at my same company to work the same flying. Trust me, I'm fairly certain a lot of guys want our LAX flying. Now if we merge our lists based on DOH, I still might not be that senior in LAX, but it still beats having to go back to year 1 pay.

As for furloughs, imagine if we stayed a separate pilot group and we get all the CAL flying and then Delta or United decides to cut you guys a lot. Guess what? You guys get furloughed, while a junior guy at ASA and XJT upgrades and makes $60K a year. If we merged the lists, furloughs would happen across our whole company, so no one would get screwed. I can't believe you guys wouldn't want this protection.

Thats a stupid idea and no skywest pilot will be for that, I would rather just see this buyout not happen.

Of course you do Slaphappy, because you want to see all the flying transition over to Skywest someday and you get a huge seniority bump