Not quite.

TWA was not in Ch 11 before purchase took place. AA required TWA to file for Ch 11 as a condition of the purchase.

Regarding the integration/staple, APA molded it exactly the way an arbitrator would have - to withstand the eventual lawsuit, which it did. Fair, depends on who you ask. I'd say the majority of TWA pilots got hosed - but it was expected, much like the way anyone getting purchased by SWA will also get hosed seniority-wise.

The main reason for relative seniority being on one side of the windfall spectrum is the preponderance of widebodies at UAL and career expectations. Roughly 58% of UAL's fleet are widebodies (if you include the 757 in that mix as it is flown as the same fleet as the 767), while only 31% of CAL's current fleet is widebody (again, including their 757s). A pilot who is halfway up UAL's seniority list is much closer to a more lucrative widebody position than a pilot who is half way up CAL's seniority list. If you merge simply by relative seniority, all CAL pilots are much closer to the higher paying equipment, while all UAL pilots are further away than they were pre-merger, or even bumped off. Simply stated, UAL is bringing mostly widebodies to the merger, while CAL is bringing mostly narrowbodies.

Even fences will not fix this problem as most of us who are under 60 are in this for the long haul. No one is going to put up a 25-year fence.

Strict date-of-hire would not be fair either, as UAL's most junior active pilot (after the Tilton furlough) is several years senior to the most junior CAL Captain.

As many have already said, it will not be strict DOH or strict relative seniority, but some conglomeration of both along with several other factors.

Given the ALPA merger/frag policy and the fact that Bond/McCaskill requires it to be the rule book for ALPA/ALPA mergers, DoH won't even be considered.

Not to mention the fact that if you do get a copy of SoCal's relative list, the first thing you may notice is that there are CAL pilots on the list that were born in 1938, a few in 1942... I doubt that the list holds any more credibility than the straight DOH list.

This is only true because most of UAL's narrowbody fleet is outsourced.

They gave up scope so bad that it caused furloughs of over 1000 and now they're the one with the premium fleet?

ALPA Merger Policy was changed last year. There are three factors to consider in building the list. This is not a priority list (the first one listed isn't necessarily the most important) and there is no weight given to any factor. They are:

1. Status and category
2. Longevity
3. Career expectations

So longevity, or date of hire, is a consideration.

This is going to be a major issue with the SLI. With furloughs back to 1999 and guys at CAL hired in 2006 and 7 holding widebodies (not sure what a stovepipe works out to), I'm glad I'm watching this from the outside.

more succinctly:

Merger Information

Just stating the facts on the current fleet makeup at UAL and CAL mainline. 58% vs 31% widebodies. I guess that would make UAL "the one with the premium fleet." Personally, I would much rather that the 100 guppies and 1400+ furloughees were still on the property at UAL.

And if you don't like the way that loss of scope and parking of guppies skews the percentages, you could always look at total number of widebodies at each airline: UAL 210, CAL 108

Either way, the career expectations of UAL and CAL pilots differ because of this, regardless of past issues with scope, furloughs, etc. A straight relative seniority integration would be no less of a windfall for the CAL pilots than a straight DOH integration would be for those at UAL.