To each there own. I do turns now. Schedules are very conducive for family time. As life goes on perhaps the WB will be more appealing, but it ain't right now esp with all the merger fueled W Pairings. Ideally we have great variety going forward. As to your chest thumping, see Page 42 of the arb Jumbo King. They didn't agree with you either...

It is not clear to us that flying jumbo-sized jets can remain for much longer the “holy grail” epitome of pilot career expectations. Few industries are as dynamic and unpredictable as the airline industry. That makes accurate prognostication of costs, markets and technologies problematic. That said, it appears from the record before us that size does still matter, but not necessarily jumbo size, per se.

So despite what your wife told you bigger isn't always better. Stings a little I know just like my negative 13% push down only difference is it doesn't affect you. Unlike me. Enjoy your windfall

Unity is nothing more than a word to me.
I'll show up, work, and go home. Nothing more. Count me out

Duly noted......enjoy your trips and let others do the heavy lifting around here.

Another example of the outlier being used as the norm. Most of the guppy pilots I talk to are complaining about the lack of trips other than 4 days available to bid. So it isn't like everyone on the guppy does 1 day trips and is home every night. Very few get to do that. Same thing on the L-UAL side on the Airbus.

As far as big vs little airplanes, did you read the award? The slots were created based on aircraft size. So lots of slots in the top were for L-UAL pilots because we had more big airplanes. Lots of slots at the bottom reserved for L-CAL airplanes because of the 1,300 guppy FO jobs brought to the mix. Are you aware that on a strict stovepipe that MOST CAL 2005 hires were in the stovepipe of guppy FO in 2010?

Puts things in perspective when you deal in facts and not just emotions.

There is that pesky “windfall” idea again! You have been drinking the Kool-Aid served by your negotiating team.

In late April of this year I pulled down the entire flight schedule for a day (a Monday) and looked at all the narrow body flying being done of the non-augmented type. (nothing like the opening presentation by the CAL Negotiating Team to motivate me) All of the below information is taken straight from the actual schedule in the computer. If you have some time on your hand you can update it for Sept info by using the FL feature in Unimatic. All CAL and UA flights are available.

What I was interested in was the "shift" in flying between the subsidiaries. IE how much flying was Sub-UA doing on Legacy CAL routes (IAH-EWR for instance) and how much flying was Sub-CAL doing on Legacy UA routes (ORD-SFO for instance) Figuring that without this merger I had no expectation to fly IAH-EWR (or similar flights out of IAH) and the CAL folks had no expectation to fly ORD-SFO. (or similar flights out of ORD)

Here is what it showed

(737 and 757) CAL flying out of:
ORD 340 hours a day (arrivals and departures)
IAD 185 hours a day (arrivals and departures)
DEN 200 hours a day (arrivals and departures)
SFO 350 hours a day (arrivals and departures)
LAX 263 hours a day (arrivals and departures)

(319, 320, 757) UAL flying out of:
IAH 432 hours a day (arrivals and departures)
EWR 249 hours a day (arrivals and departures)
CLE 49 hours a day (arrivals and departures)

When you subtract the flying that UA is doing on CAL routes from the flying that CAL is doing on UA routes you end up with a net benefit to the CAL side of over 600 hours per day!!!!

At 10.5 hours per airplane per day that is 57 airplanes worth of flying!!!!!
at 7 crews per airlplane (a fairly conservative ballpark for unaugmented manpower planning) that is 400 Captains and 400 First Officers.

All of those positions have been filled by Legacy CAL pilots but are being flown on the Legacy United Routes.

The bigger issue is that the airline has not grown by a net of 57 narrowbody airplanes! The actual net growth is down around 30ish airplanes. So, the 10% downsizing of IAH, that was inevitable based on the economics,( see Smisek's comments) has been more than compensated by the available growth on the legacy UAL routes.

Now on the ISL final decision there are a total of 4591 pilots on the CAL list. If you add an additional 800 to that (a conservative estimate of all the net jobs that CAL pilots are flying on now that were created by the United Routes) and do the math, you get that those 800 jobs make up 15% of the total.

So, you have been better off with bidding for the last 3.5 years by at least that 15% margin because of the United routes. You get to keep all the money and the bid that the growth brought you. Now that the ISL is out, you have to “give" access to some of that to the UA pilots in the future. Who knows how many years it will take for the bidding to get us to the fleet and seat that our seniority allows. The 13% you say you gave up, does not even cover the benefit you have received since the merger was anonounced, in a pure percentage of the list analysis, not to mention that you are now on a list with a massive increase in Widebodies, so when you consider the spread of jobs brought to the merger (status and category) you gain was even greater.
So, you got 3.5 years of bidding on all the new jobs (even though your route system was actually shrinking) you get to keep all the extra money that that bidding brought you, and you get to keep the bid going forward. But, now you have to give up access to a portion of those jobs going forward to the group that brought the routes to the dance in the first place and you are claiming that group is receiving a “windfall.”

I know there has been a great deal of talk on these boards about all the growth plans that CAL had, but the reality of what is happened shows they did not, because their routes were not profitable. What has actually happened on those routes is no longer a plan it is REALITY. You know what they say, “the truth hurts.”

Kinda stings a little I know!

Not anymore. We finally took back our flying that we built over the years with our sweat equity (aka Longevity).

Seems weird that we couldn't bid our own flying for the last three years, but at least now we can.