A thoughtout and reasonable reply to my post. Thanks, and I agree to the underlying logic you present.
Are you actually a West pilot?
I'm actually a US Airways pilot. An original USAir "rust head" hired just prior to any of the mergers, PI, PSA, Trump or AWA. I remember flying with some of the old Mohawk and Lake Central captains, who when they weren't giving "flying lessons" they constantly groused about how they were "done wrong" in those mergers. Those guys could sure make a four day trip miserable!
I've never been furloughed and never been senior, the ALPA merger process utilized in the first two mergers, predominantly DOH with minor conditions and restrictions (no bump no flush, ect), placed nearly all of the PI and PSA pilots ahead of me on the list. At the time, that's just the way it worked, no problem. In those days, the ALPA AAA DOH mantra was almost a "religious conviction". It went something like this, " The march of time treats all equally, time can't be created or destroyed".
By the time the Trump merger came along, things had changed at ALPA and as I recall, slotting was all the rage. I felt they should have been given their EAL DOH (even though they had all specifically signed a letter when they went to work for "The Donald" giving up their EAL seniority) they went to Trump because they needed a job and EAL was in a "death spiral". In any case, all but a few new hire engineers, went on the list ahead of me.
Along came the AWA merger and I still felt the list should have gone DOH, of course by then the APLA slotting methodology had gotten it's nose under the tent here during the Trump merger and now something as simple as DOH became this relative position, equipment type, career expectation monster that is so complicated that the whole integration process became a "rubics cube" of trying to make everybody happy (or at least equally pissed off) and the end product ends up being decided by a bunch of overpaid (non-pilot) lawyers.
Personally, I still believe in the basic concept of DOH, with the above mentioned conditions and restrictions. I think it should go that way here and I think it should be very strictly adhered to. Which would also do away with the widebody set aside in the NIC. Been here long enough to hold it, East or West, and when there is a new opening, you get it. Period.
The other option is separate ops till the whole thing is overtaken by events. There's that time thing again.
seajay
ps: I appreciate your kind remarks regarding the character of my previous post.