Relative seniority in my opinion, is what Cal's intention was all along. Although the current merger policy does not mention it, relative seniority is the best they could hope for. They are at a disadvantage when considering in total, the three guiding merger principles.

Since the beginning, relative seniority was the consistent theme espoused by the Cal side as fair. Their isl proposal is a long shot at best. If the final construct is essentially relative seniority, they will have succeeded.

When do the arbs come out of executive session?

They started meeting this morning and are currently scheduled through Aug 1st.

I think it's another case of "we can simply agree to disagree".

The way I look at it, DAL proposed stovepiped Cat/Stat sorted by ratio with 7 categories. The arbs went with stovepiped Cat/Stat sorted by ratio with 4 categories. I'd say DAL got a list very close to what they proposed. The pull&plug was for 274 pilots out of 12400 and really only affected seniority for the senior most pilots. The arbs were trying to protect the higher retirement rate at NWA and the resulting near term career expectations of NWAs senior most pilots. If there was any difference it was in regards to the DC9 FOs. DAL proposed stapling them to the bottom, but the arbs rejected that and integrated them along with all other NB FOs even though DAL argued they had "zero" career expectations because NW had already announced the imminent demise of the DC9 fleet. That is what moved your relative seniority more than anything else.


What will be fascinating to me will be how Eischen uses or doesn't use the new ALPA language and how much weight he and the other board members choose to put on the longevity clause. I still think the starting point will be stovepiped cat/stat but after that I don't know.


We'll see soon enough.

Do you ever wonder about the posturing when you see past mec chairs that still alpa dropp all of their trips for the last few months? How do they pull that off and what are they up to?

Relative seniority, the end result.

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You're right, we probably aren't going to agree- however my point is that the arbiters rarely take a 100% side. The end result of the DL list, while it was "cat/stat," was pre-merger relative seniority within 1% for most pilots except DL91 and NW95 guys. The DL91 and the NW95 shifted up ~3% and DL91 down 3%. That was primarily due to the pull/plug. Those were hardly the most senior pilots.

For everyone else... wherever you were on your pre-mergerl list is where you likely ended up on the combined list.

SLI's are always interesting. The guys that are hardcore that their side is right are the ones that always end up the most upset.

You mean like the UAL proposal where everyone was within 5% and that was labeled as "extreme", and the CAL proposal where pilots on the very bottom of the CAL list who were on furlough somehow got 3,000 UAL pilots stapled below them going from 100% to 75% overnight and that was OK?

Stay hardcore like you are and get disappointed. That's the way these things go every time.