This explains it

[prechilill]

Guess it depends on how you look at it. Being one of the PI boys myself, I have my own perspective on how things played out regarding the PI/U seniority integration. The PI pilots were trying to preserve their career expectations but fought an uphill battle and lost to DOH with conditions and restrictions. Personally, I don't believe those conditions and restrictions did a whole lot. The block hours were moved around the bases and the widebody orders PI had for 767s were tinkered with to take them out of play, so basically, within a short period of time, they were effectivly neutralized. I went from blockholding 727 Captain to 737 junior reserve. I did hold onto my Captain seat which is more than I can say for many others. For a solid year after that integration, few PI pilots upgraded. It was mostly PSA and U pilots taking those Captain slots with their new seniority. Since I was scheduling line checks at the time, I'm in a position to know.

DOH with conditions and restrictions is NOT the perfect solution to all seniority integrations. PSA had NO widebody aircraft. If DOH is such a perfect solution, then why were so many PSA pilot afforded left seat privileges over the PI pilots with the "career expectations"?

Everyone has their opinion, and I don't whine about the happenings of 1989 very often, but this whole thing revolves around each pilot's personal perspective on how he/she should be treated on the list. Usually that takes priority over who is getting thrown under the bus.

Just my opinion...

A320 Driver B)

Thank you for sharing your reasoned perspective. If there is an historical example of why DOH "with protections" by itself is a failed integration method it is certainly the PI/U integration case. Bethune ruined a lot of careers. How much did he make off the deal btw?

 

[NCflyer]

In the real word, a guy with a 737 captain job before the merger, say, at the top of his base for bidding purposes, is going to end up on the combined list in a similar position regardless of his age.

His seniority at HP buys him that. He will end up adjacent on the list to a U 737 captain who is at the top of his base for bidding purposes.

The fact that the latter might be 58 and the former 35 does not matter. It only matters to some small population of the U pilot group who seems to want to discount the success/sheer luck/whatever of the HP guys who worked at a growing carrier versus one that had done nothing but shrink for years.

Or, why should an HP Captain pull gear for someone who had no prayer of ever making Captain absent the merger? That line of thinking cuts both ways.

DOH was DOA in this fight. The furloughed were never going to jump people who brought a job to the merger. That's absolutely absurd. The 18 year first officer at U was never going to step over an active HP captain. That, too, is absurd.

The only (and I mean only) complaint that is legitimate from the "real world" perspective is the attrition one on the widebodies. I personally think the HP guys should have been fenced off the 767 and 330 until the junior active pilot on the U side had had the chance to bid them, FO or Captain.

That is one of the most logical, common sense explanations I have seen yet.

It's called "relative seniority". If you were a senior CA or FO you should still be senior on the combined list. If you were a junior CA or FO you should still be junior on the combined list regardless of your age. The fact that someone may not have been old enough to shave when you were hired has no bearing on "relative seniority".

I have said before and say again DOH wasn't going to happen. However I think that the East's attrition, both wide body & narrow body, should have been better protected for the current east pilots.

 

[EastUS]

Were you this upset about the Shuttle pilots not getting DOH? I certainly don't recall the non-Shuttle pilots organizing protests at ALPA headquarters, threatening to oust ALPA, or anything else over that "absurd" award. Just wondering it the outrage is a case by case thing....

Jim

Yes, I personally was troubled by the shuttle situation. If it causes you the slightest discomfort attempting to defend the Piedmont attack on DOH, from which you presonally benfitted..that's your problem.

 

[BoeingBoy]

As I said where would 10 year of attrition put the 1987 hire on the East list only. It would put him in a wide body CO position. You are absolutely right that if he is now 4000 something on the combined list, the 1800 guys slotted ahead of will deny his pre-merger expectation. Case and point that the entire policy and methodology doesn't hold up to ALPA policy.

You apparently misread, or didn't read, my entire post laying out the theoretical results of the next 10 years of attrition.

Unlike your previous statement, the bottom guy on the East list would not get anywhere close to a widebody captain thru attrition only - either combined or with East operating separately. That bottom pilot would be about the same place either way.

A "1987 hire" covers a lot of people - almost 500 on the East list. Is there someone in that group that might get widebody captain due to attrition if East remained separate but just miss it if combined? As I said to someone else - yes, there are exceptions, expecially those who are young relative to their East peers for their seniority on the East list.

So I'll make you a deal. Give me the following info, absolutely guarantee that it'll be true in 10 years irregardless of whether ops remain separate or combined, and I'll do my best to tell you if you're right or not.

- a specific person - "1987 hire" covers about 500 East pilots

- how many widebodies will be operated by East if it remains separate and by US if combined, since that determines the number of widebody capt jobs.

- the number of pilots senior to our "1987 hire" that could hold a widebody in 10 years but choose not to for various reasons, both East and HP, since that determines the junior pilot that can hold a widebody job.

- the number of pilots on disability, etc, senior to our "1987 hire", both East and HP, since that determines the "bidding" seniority of a pilot.

- the number of non-flying active pilots (supervisory, etc) senior to our "1987 hire" in 10 years, both East and HP, which also goes to "bidding" seniority.

- whether our "1987 hire" will himself be out on disability or not in 10 years - can't hold a widebody job if you're not working.

- whether there will be another merger or not within the next 10 years and the outcome as it affects the seniority # of our "1987 hire" as well as the above items -self explanatory.

So give me that info, guarantee that it'll be accurate in 10 years, and we can discuss whether that "1987 hire" got screwed or not.

Until then, you're only speculating to support a position in an argument.

Jim

 

[Pi brat]

undefined

You're right, in a few "extraordinary" cases (people very young for their East seniority (would this be a good place to insert the "age should mean something" arguments I've read!! ) a few pilots could be worse off if one assumes that the only change the future will bring is mandatory retirements. But in 15 years, anything can happen - look at the expectations for the US/PS/PI merger in 1990 and what existed by 2005. That far out should anything be guaranteed by a merging of seniority lists? Besides, is the difference between #3 and #123 so earthshattering that it's worth "burning this place down"?

Who's to not only say, but guarantee in the combined list, that HP wouldn't have widebodies going to Europe/Asia in 15 years and those 100+ HP pilots would have been flying it before you without the merger. Besides, only having a handful of widebodies is something of an aberration for an airline our size - look at the airlines ranked on either side of us - CO and NW. One a little bigger and one a little smaller (by most common measures) and both have a lot more widebodies than US. Should that aberration be codified in the merged list based only on the prediction that it will still exist in 15 years?

True story - my last PI number (1989 list) was 458 and I expected to retire from PI a little over #100. I retired with seniority #391 (2006 list). The expectation was that growth would "take care of everything", then we went from about 440 airplanes to about 220. Should my expectations have been somehow guaranteed and someone else have taken the hit for my "dashed expectations"?

Not that I think the award is perfect - they never are - but the widebody protection is one of the two things that I would have done a little differently if I had been the arbitrator. But overall, it meets my "what you could do the day before you could still do the day after" test for fairness. In general, nobody has more, or less, bidding power than they had on their separate list.
That is the effect of a straight DOH method. If the most senior HP F/O would be put amoung our furloughed, who would
get all the Captain bids for years to come - the East pilots. So while the West pilot's number would change yearly from attrition - they would stay no higher than they were when the list went into effect for a long time. That's what I meant.

I know - put in conditions/restrictions. The problem is two-fold. Conditions/restrictions often assume a future course of events - because X is going to happen there needs to be Y adjustment. If that future doesn't happen the conditions/restrictions don't work as well as they were intended (or work too well). And the more complex the conditions/restrictions are the easier they are to take advantage of in the "put theory into practice" step - how they will actually be implemented. Not that one side or the other would want to do that. I've been eye-witness to both problems....
Jim

Jim,

Still trying to figure out how to just quote parts, sorry.

Actually born a little later. US Air is the only place I'm called a baby.

You are painting with that big brush again. Find a post where I said I'd burn this place down. What my posts have said is that I think the west guys would be "whinning" and looking for relief just like we are, if the decision went our way. As a matter of fact, a few of them are on tape asking Doug if he would over turn it if it didn't go their way, before the decision came out. I said I don't blame the west guys, I blame the system, and I will treat the west guys with respect and kindness unless they don't treat me that way.

My Dad went to work for PI in 1968 in customer service. I have always been taught to take care of the customer. I always have and always will. I don't like that the people paying our salaries are caught in the middle. If this thing stands, I will move on and live with it. I think our management team is a much greater threat to our future than the pilots fighting, but it doesn't help.

I think you should have had the rights to the 6 767s PI had before any US/PS guy, till you retired.

I know fences have problems. A big one is base closures, as we have seen. Have you ever talked to a NW guy about it? I did one night and he said that while it took a while to get used to, the long fences worked well for them. I guess there are a few thousand pilots that would disagree with him though, it's what we do best.

 

[prechilill]

Until then, you're only speculating to support a position in an argument.

Jim

Practically everything written by east pilots is speculation and charged with emotion.

 

[BoeingBoy]

Actually born a little later. US Air is the only place I'm called a baby.

Oops, my mistake - had about 4 different parts of the seniority list open in different windows and sorted the wrong one by DOB.

You are painting with that big brush again. Find a post where I said I'd burn this place down.

Sorry - I didn't mean that remark to be directed to you personally, although after re-reading it comes across that way.

What my posts have said is that I think the west guys would be "whinning" and looking for relief just like we are, if the decision went our way. As a matter of fact, a few of them are on tape asking Doug if he would over turn it if it didn't go their way, before the decision came out. I said I don't blame the west guys, I blame the system, and I will treat the west guys with respect and kindness unless they don't treat me that way.

I don't doubt that there would be whining on the West side if it had gone the other way. Nobody enjoys being denied what they want. As for the volume and uniformity, who knows - a couple of pilots don't make a mass uprising. But let's look at the other side of that equation. It the award had gone the other way and it was the West pilots that wanted changes, what would the East pilots be saying? Pretty much what the West pilots are saying now?

As I've said before (and over and over), the whole argument seems to be over what might happen. That's some very shifting sands to base any argument on.

Did the US pilots, in the summer of 1990, know that 25% of their group would be furloughed a year later?

Did the US pilots, in 2000, know that 1/3 would be furloughed and the fleet cut by nearly 50% a few years later?

Yet many now claim that the future is clearly visible and can be predicted with absolute certainty.

In reality, the only "sure thing" in aviation is the job a pilot has today. As I've said, if a pilot can hold the same job, fly the same schedules/trips, get the same vacation (summer, winter, whatever) after the award as before, he's kept the only thing he/she could ever count on having. Throw in some relatively minor adjustments (fences, whatever) for the obvious differences between the two operations (like widebodies), and let the future hold what it always holds - the unknown.

On the other hand, and in my opinion, if a pilot's merged seniority # will hold something a lot better than that which his unmerged number could hold - the combined list takes away from one to give to another. Likewise if the combined list seniority won't possibly hold what was held before. Then the only choice, if one is to "right the wrongs", is long and complicated fences. Fences designed to make adjustments to the basic list under a given set of future events. If future events don't pan out as predicted, the fences don't work as predicted and could actually do more harm instead of mitigating harm.

Therefore my version of the KISS theory. Start out with a basically fair list based on what's known absolutely - what each pilot had the seniority to do on his/her own list. Tamper with that - conditions/restrictions - the absolutely least amount possible for whatever differences between the two operations exist.

In your specific case, if you're fortunate enough to not be on disability, the airline doesn't implode, etc, you'd probably get your 1st choice in schedules, trips, vacation, etc as you neared 60 (or whatever the retirement age is then). Is being able to "only" get your 10th or 20th choice, given the number of pilots senior to you who probably won't matter because they're on disability, in a supervisory position, in another base, etc, really worth all this uproar?

Is it really worth working under LOA 93 for the next few years and hoping to improve on it later.

Is it really worth risking Doug/Scott/J Glass deciding they've had enough grief from the East pilots and letting you wither and fade away? You do know that the West pilots can fly all domestic, HI, Canada, Mexico, and nearly half the Europe service as soon as there's a single certificate, the airplanes, and enough bodies to staff them?

Jim

 

[Piedmont1984]

The problem with the award is that it is far too simplistic for a merger between two such different pilot groups. Conditions and restrictions, if innovative and dynamic, could have left both sides equally happy or unhappy. Nicolau took the easy path - and ended up derailing the whole process.

When you slot a 1987 hire behind a 2005 hire, take away his chance to upgrade, and tell him no windfall has taken place.....well here we are.

 

[traderjake]

When you slot a 1987 hire behind a 2005 hire, take away his chance to upgrade, and tell him no windfall has taken place.....well here we are.

How long it took you to get to your position on May 18, 2005 is irrelavant.

What matters is where you were.

If you were a Reserve First Officer on May 18th why are you entittled to be a Blockholding Captain on May 19th.

That would be a windfall and why DOH was never an option.

 

[ussnark]

How long it took you to get to your position on May 18, 2005 is irrelavant.

What matters is where you were.

If you were a Reserve First Officer on May 18th why are you entittled to be a Blockholding Captain on May 19th.

That would be a windfall and why DOH was never an option.

Yah see, tj, where I come from, before we make comparisons between apples and oranges, we try to level the playing field just a little or restrict our comparisons to similar bits and pieces.

To wit. There are many things that affect "relative position". A large part is the contract under which each group operates. Assuming each group used identical work rules, then there would likely be less outrage over a "relative position" merge.

Here, apparently, that is not the case. Singling out one instance (of many), were the easties to have the same vacation parameters as the rooties, the east pilot group would have to acquire an additional 600+ pilots. That would tend to change someones relative position, I would think, by about 20% in the easties case.

If that is too vague for you, take an extreme case where one group, say, the east group, runs with zero "soft" time, no vacation, one could characterize it as a "minimum staffed" environment. The other group, say, the rooties, on the other hand have 22% "soft" time, 45 days per year vacation, in a "well staffed" environment.

Now, do a slot merge before you make the lists equivalent. Is it "fair"? Relative position, right? The pilot who is at 20% relative position before normalization goes to 33% in the case of 3000 eastie pilots and 600 pilots needed to equalize the east list with the west. and that is just for the vacation.

You argue that he should stay at 20% for the "slot". I would argue that using slotting to resolve a merger issue assumes many things, one of which is that all parties are on equal footing with respect to staffing issues. Slotting will always penalize the most efficient group, giving a (sometimes, as in this merger, a giant) windfall to the less efficient group.

In fact, I would generalize further that in a seniority based system used by both the easties and the rooties, it is downright rank and dishonest to merge using something other than "length of service", many times referred to as seniority.

 

[Bud8EE]

Oops, my mistake - had about 4 different parts of the seniority list open in different windows and sorted the wrong one by DOB.
Sorry - I didn't mean that remark to be directed to you personally, although after re-reading it comes across that way.
I don't doubt that there would be whining on the West side if it had gone the other way. Nobody enjoys being denied what they want. As for the volume and uniformity, who knows - a couple of pilots don't make a mass uprising. But let's look at the other side of that equation. It the award had gone the other way and it was the West pilots that wanted changes, what would the East pilots be saying? Pretty much what the West pilots are saying now?

As I've said before (and over and over), the whole argument seems to be over what might happen. That's some very shifting sands to base any argument on.

Did the US pilots, in the summer of 1990, know that 25% of their group would be furloughed a year later?

Did the US pilots, in 2000, know that 1/3 would be furloughed and the fleet cut by nearly 50% a few years later?

Yet many now claim that the future is clearly visible and can be predicted with absolute certainty.

In reality, the only "sure thing" in aviation is the job a pilot has today. As I've said, if a pilot can hold the same job, fly the same schedules/trips, get the same vacation (summer, winter, whatever) after the award as before, he's kept the only thing he/she could ever count on having. Throw in some relatively minor adjustments (fences, whatever) for the obvious differences between the two operations (like widebodies), and let the future hold what it always holds - the unknown.

On the other hand, and in my opinion, if a pilot's merged seniority # will hold something a lot better than that which his unmerged number could hold - the combined list takes away from one to give to another. Likewise if the combined list seniority won't possibly hold what was held before. Then the only choice, if one is to "right the wrongs", is long and complicated fences. Fences designed to make adjustments to the basic list under a given set of future events. If future events don't pan out as predicted, the fences don't work as predicted and could actually do more harm instead of mitigating harm.

Therefore my version of the KISS theory. Start out with a basically fair list based on what's known absolutely - what each pilot had the seniority to do on his/her own list. Tamper with that - conditions/restrictions - the absolutely least amount possible for whatever differences between the two operations exist.

In your specific case, if you're fortunate enough to not be on disability, the airline doesn't implode, etc, you'd probably get your 1st choice in schedules, trips, vacation, etc as you neared 60 (or whatever the retirement age is then). Is being able to "only" get your 10th or 20th choice, given the number of pilots senior to you who probably won't matter because they're on disability, in a supervisory position, in another base, etc, really worth all this uproar?

Is it really worth working under LOA 93 for the next few years and hoping to improve on it later.

Is it really worth risking Doug/Scott/J Glass deciding they've had enough grief from the East pilots and letting you wither and fade away? You do know that the West pilots can fly all domestic, HI, Canada, Mexico, and nearly half the Europe service as soon as there's a single certificate, the airplanes, and enough bodies to staff them?

Jim

Jim,

You are just making my point. You would ague the award is fair because you are speculating the situation would not happen. You are speculating that the merger did not in fact improve the plight of the AWA pilots because the fact is that airline was also failing. Only God knows what would have happened. Are you him? 🙂 DOH is the only objective method, and the only thing certain is that when the guy on the list older than you and ahead of you retires, you move up a number. That is the only thing certain when you go to work at any airline, and if a national union is to exist and govern its participating carrier with national polices, then the reality of how things are done at one airline should be the principle that is used to combine lists. Conditions that would ratio upgrades for 10 years or however long to preserve the AWA attrition and fleet projections, fine. Conditions that would fence their domiciles for a time of years that would protect their bidding power as Captains or First Officers, fine. Downturn conditions that would protect their list from bearing the brunt of a furlough, fine. At the end of the day, anybody on a list, whether how it is done at the individual airline or on a merged list should be ahead of the guy hired after him. At some point in the future when the fences come down, it is one airline and a persons period of service will put him or her where they would have been anyway and you won't have the screwed up mess you have now.

Bud

 

[ClueByFour]

DOH is the only objective method

Really? Then why are there furloughed East pilots who, after a mere 5 years or so at AWA are holding a better position (pre-merger) than they did with 16 years at AAA?

Ergo sum, DOH is certainly not objective.

 

[Bud8EE]

Really? Then why are there furloughed East pilots who, after a mere 5 years or so at AWA are holding a better position (pre-merger) than they did with 16 years at AAA?

Ergo sum, DOH is certainly not objective.

Because every other way to put a list together is based on lawyers, argument, opinion, and arbitration and no one can possibly know the outcome at the time the merger is announced. The outcome can vary from merger to merger, and could have varied on this merger purely by the choice of arbitrator.

If you are a pilot, then you are dumber than whale#### if you think that there is definition to "career expectation" or "windfall" that is not purely colored by perception or one's own self interest and there being anyway for a group who feels slighted not to be able to argue that those provisos were not met from their point of view. As you can see there is no chance of moving forward with any kind of unity in this mess and as such the union at US Airways is unraveling and ALPA is will lose big as well. Then the fallout from that just spreads around the industry, because there is no such thing as a local issue in this profession. It's a sad reality that pilots or a union like ALPA just doesn't get. Saying that is what a neutral arbitration is for is ludicrous, because unless all 5 billion souls on this planet had the same values, opinions, life experiences, were the same gender, had the same beliefs, same politics, were the same age, had the same opinions, there is absolutely nothing consistent about arbitration. The same merger could have different results every time with a different person. Objectivity vs Subjectivity is like a Q&A test vs a essay test. 100 teachers could grade the exacts same Q&A test and the results will be identical. 100 teachers could grade the same essay test with a 100 different results because their own personal opinion is part of the grading process. A merger policy where every merger sees the the list put together the same way every time and the order of the names was set as the outset is objective. DOH, is a principle all pilots understand and hold dear at their own airline. The only thing left to negotiation should be fences, conditions, and restriction to ease the integration.

I only have 18 months to go, so this effects of this will likely have no impact and not reach out and affect my carrier before I hang it up. I feel sorry for those with 5 or more at any carrier, because if they feel the results, the animosity, and the out come there won't impact "pattern bargaining" and show up in their paycheck, then they have their heads buried in the sand.

 

[BoeingBoy]

the only thing certain is that when the guy on the list older than you and ahead of you retires, you move up a number.

I've never said different, Bud. However, moving up a number is not equal to advancement - reserve to blockholder, 737 to 757, F/O to Captain.

Let me ask you this - during the latter half of 1991 and again in 2002, East pilots were retiring. Those at the bottom were "moving up a number" for every one of those retirements. How much did those at the bottom benefit? Did "moving up a number" keep them from being furloughed?

From the latter half of 2002 through early 2006, East pilots were retiring in relatively large numbers. The bottom active pilots "moved up" lots of numbers during that time. Did it get them off reserve? Did it get them 757/767/A330 F/O bids?

Yes, retirements are guaranteed to result in pilots "moving up a number". Unfortunately, "moving up a number" guarantees nothing. See the difference.....

Jim

 

[philly rocks]

Was the arbitrator of sound mind at his age ? Pilots can't fly over age 60 but their union agreed to an arbitrator pushing 90 years old ? Disgraceful.