WM keeps expressing his outrage over 300ish SWA FO's getting an out-of-seniority upgrade due to the 1 Jan 2015 restriction on former AT pilots bidding Captain at SWA. Had his ALPA "every Captain keeps his seat" dream become reality there would have been 2,000 SWA FO's with a date of hire SENIOR to the most junior Captain on the Air Tran list. Put another way, there were more FO's at SWA with a DOH senior to the most junior AT Captain than there were pilots on the entire Air Tran seniority list. When it's all said and done I'd rather the guys who went though the whole process of getting a type and interviewing at SWA come out ahead of those who got there by reading about it in a newspaper.

I'm not hiding behind anything. I'm a line pilot--my union took my dues and got the best deal it could for me and the rest of my pilot group. All of this talk of what Gary/SWAPA did or didn't do is totally meaningless at this point.

 

Nice to see you feel AT pilots are your equals.

 

fyp Johnso

 

During the NWA/DAL merger they did!!! Also a pilot was pay protected for 2 years if they were displaced off their seat/fleet when the company started moving metal around. I guess NWA/DAL pilots just looked at each other as equals.......

 

On the outside, looking in... I'm impressed with WM and Rolf's restraint, even as they support their position.

From my viewpoint, I had never seen an airline side so openly with one group, to isolate them in a subsidiary (Guadalupe), and threaten with their jobs if they didn't take the native-sponsored agreement. Then again, I was amazed that they could get away with it. It tells me that Air Tran must have had some really crappy fragmentation language, that they couldn't force arbitration. There is nothing wrong with turning down deals in favor of arbitration in SLI's, since SLI's are often almost never possible to solve amicably. Nothing wrong, that is, unless you're not in a position to do this.

I think for the rest of the industry, the moral of the story is to have strong contractual language in Section 1. That's a hard one to invest in, but a costly one to learn about in hindsight.

I feel bad for the AirTran guys that the SWAPA guys negotiated the way they did, and colluded with their management, but then again, it's hard to blame them for using the tools they were handed by AirTran's contract. Management was desperate to eliminate the competitor, and favoring the natives was the short-sighted way to do it.

Would another group have acted differently than either of those two groups?

At the end of the day, of course, IHSWA.

Best Regards,

Sink r8.

 

Sorry, "real" SWA pilots, but WM is absolutely right. He does speak what most AirTran pilots think. I can't remember the last trip I flew with someone who wasn't absolutely ****ed off about this whole deal. He's not a crazy fringe guy (on this topic, anyway ). He's just speaking what most guys think but don't say for fear of being targeted by the CULTure nazis.

 

Funny, I can't either.

 

Oh look, someone who was hired after me and is now senior to me (and quite possibly flew as my FO at Pinnacle) is ****ed off that he wasn't able to screw us over enough. Pretty much demonstrates just how screwed up this merger is.

 

Rolf - As someone who is non-union and in "management" of the legal definition this is just another roadblock on the way to sustainable profitability. The very existence of these threads, the glances of AT pilots in the concourses across the US and other outlets tells me that it should have been handled better. One could argue that the book will be closed on 1/2015 as the great pacifier of all arguments (money) kicks in but the realist in me tells me that the feelings from this could spill over for years to come after. I firmly believe that only someone who is looking short term (2-3 years) would call this a dream come true so herein lies my problem ever since I have been engaged in various ways since this whole thing began in 9/2010 - I have personally not seen one truly long-term decision being made by the powers that be on Mt. Olympus in order to retain all of our jobs in the long term nor increase even short term revenue (by making even incrementally small smart decisions) so that we may expand our fleet, network, hire more of you guys, more girls coming out of community college or some competent IT guys with US passports and put this whole debacle to rest.

The talk about QOL and pay over lifetime does not mean zilch if the hard decisions that need to be made are never made. There will be no QOL or Paycheck+10% regardless of the last 40 years if there is no execution today for the next 1 or 2 decades.

Ill give you an example of what really chaps my rear my friend. One word - Codeshare. If people within a football field proximity of where I am Monday-Friday had the balls to make a decision and execute on it not even just after the FL announcement but back in the planned WS codeshare deal and even before with ATA (we're talking about almost a decade when planning is considered between the 3) the mountain of revenue we could have taken in since legal close by combining our networks we would have handsomely covered the 3 years of B-scale pay some of our friends at the big A have, a nice bonus for everyone and maybe reconsidered the financial performance of various FL stations that have since been shuttered. Heres the thing that hurts though: If this complete failure of execution with such financial repercussions would have been committed at the once independent subsidiary, heck even if this happened at a Delta or US there would have been a massive house cleaning without diddly-daddling around.

And guess what? This one thing very well could have led to the consideration of more WN metal flying to more cities which equals more money for you guys in the long run, it could have equaled better trips and more hours in the short term for the "a" side since the network would not have to bear some really creative routings, shifting of the fleet or doing dirty laundry, it could have led to an equalization of pay in some form as it would have caused much less financial strain, it could have caused FL rampers not being outsourced after the acquisition in a half dozen stations and/or offered a lower job literally across the country or perhaps prevented them from working the shift that did not conflict with their family time.

What I really find futile is blanket statements that everyone in X thinks like this. Frankly its a bunch of horse manure.

 

I don't know why you were surprised. The LUV treated Muse/Transtar even worse...they took their jobs and shut them down.

They were just a little nicer with Morris.