This sounds to me like you added 2+2 and got 73. In fact, it makes absolutely no sense at all. Career expectations in a traditional sense are very easy to track. I've been a Captain since 1999 and with a standalone United, would have retired in the top 10. OF COURSE you make some assumptions when trying to calculate career expectations. One, that the company will survive alone, and two that it won't merger. Neither one can be assured, for ANY airline, but that's not the point, and DEFINITELY not for ours, which have 3 BK's between us. At the point of merger, neither airline was being run by a management team with any talent whatsoever. This is being demonstrated daily.

The point is, part of merging two pilots group is to consider career expectations of the pilots of each carrier. It is one factor to be considered. The assumptions are no real growth or shrinking, survival, and no merger. Plug in the retirements and you get a number. It's not rocket science. I don't have a clue what you are talking about with your SJS over there, but everybody understands that career expectations are a calculation to be made to help determine a fair and equitable list. It isn't the end all, be all. Just one of the factors of the ALPA merger policy. You know, the document the LCAL Merger Committee completely ignored?

 

Every time you post I dutifully try to figure out what you are saying... And fail. This post makes absolutely no sense. Not because your argument is bad/wrong. I can't judge that because I literally can't figure out what you are talking about.

 

Sucker don't want no help, sucker don't get no help. Them mud-fish be cutting me straight to the bone yo.

 

I'm pickin' up what you're layin' down.

 

I guess some people aren't ever going to get it...at least publically.

Reality check: The industry landscape has changed over the last 10 years.
If you thought your career was going to progress merrily as you thought it would as a stand alone entity, your are on some serious drugs. Not only in light if the NW/DAL merger, you have the Middle East carriers coming to town pushing for pre-custom clearances back in the sand lot, cabotage, etc. The threats are omnipresent.

While it would takes some years. a stand alone carrier in these times would slowly get marginalized into nothing. You all would be going BACKWARDS.

That being said, if I had to choose (between the two) which carrier to last longer it would unequivocally be UAL because of the breadth of its route system and its position in STAR. While it would be a long and uncertain road to hoe, I think UA could have a shot at recreating its original mass to be competitive. Unfortunately for CAL, being the third US wheel in Skyteam is not an enviable position. While CAL added somethings to SKY, it simply didn't have enough to add(route/fleet wise) to the alliance anymore, now that DAL merger was done. UAL was still STAR's lynchpin for the North American portion of the network and if UAL was forced to go it alone, it is conceivable that the STAR partners themselves would lend support for self preservation. I don't think DAL would see it the same way for CAL. Certainly on a comparative basis, it stands to reason the odds of CAL disappearing first are logically greater.

Of course none of this matters to the panel and GB is right in that a career expectation can only be reasonably done by doing a static model.

My only point of the post is too reply to posts like LCALdude:

 

Them suckas be mo flappin jus no be done communicaatin. Shizzzz.

 

I saw the expanded verbage and missed the sacrasm. It's a whipsaw nightmare. An IAH 764 does a trip IAH-IAD-Moscow-ORD-IAH... who's flying is it? As ugly is it is, better for all of us to do the SLI and get it over with. My point was (as I think yours was) that both LCAL and LUAL would have been happy to continue the career progression they had pre-merger... nothing more... nothing less.

 

Moscow-ORD? I don't think UAL operates Moscow-ORD.

 

YouTube

 

Numbers don't lie when used correctly. Not that this matters, but just to "edumicate" everyone that wants to use this argument in the future.





Imagine 2 companies. Company A has 200 "acitve" pilots and 100 furloughed pilots and company B has 100 active pilots. Now imagine these companies are identical in every other way same planes, same career expectations, same longevity. Now imagine Ben Salley is number 50 at Company B so he is 50th percentile.

If you merge these two companies as CAL recommended (i.e. 1:1) then Ben ends up number 100 on the new list and next assume you don't count furloughed pilots then his new percentile is 100/300 or 33% versus his percentile at company B which was 50%.

If you merge these two companies based on a straight 2:1 ratio for active pilots then Ben Salley is number 150 or 50th percentile, the exact percentile he was at company B.

Now imagine that you mix the 100 furloughed pilots from company A in with the bottom 50 pilots at company A and the bottom 25 pilots at company B using a ratio of 150:25 A:B only for the last 25 numbers at company B. In this scenario Ben Salley still gets number 150 on the seniority list but his percentile changes to 150/400 or 37.5%

If you are not in the bottom part of the list where the furloughed pilots are being mixed you have not been impacted, but your percentile has changed dramatically.