[flyover]

Originally Posted by Velocipede

It all depends on how the merger committees negotiate the merged seniority list. Since both companies have widebodies and international flying, a DoH merger would make sense. Essentially take all the names, and sort them by Date of Hire.

How does that make sense? It never has in any other seniority list merger.

The problem is when pilot egos get involved. Let's say Delta buys NWA outright. Then the Delta guys would say, "We acquired you, so you go to the bottom of the list."

How do you know they would say that? They never have in any other acquisition Delta made.

That's what CAL did to the People Express guys. They gave the Capts. they needed to fly the PE jets DoH and stapled all the rest of the pilots to the bottom of the list.

That's what CAL management did to the People Express guys. And because that was the case it was overturned in court, something that never happens to lists put through the ALPA process.

Then you could see a NWA/Republic deal. The largest plane Republic flew was the 757. So, the NWA pukes put "fences" around all their widebody flying, saying Republic pilots had no career expectation of flying widebodies, so they were proscribed from ever holding a "NWA" widebody seat.

Agree that the attitude of the NWA pilots was ridiculous in that list merger. And the payoff was years of acrimony still going on today.

Personally, it just goes to show the current ALPA merger/frag policy is a joke. Need evidence?

Just try to find a case of an ALPA list merger being overturned by a court. Never happens. The judge looks at the arguments then looks at the process and says something like, "There doesn't seem to be a perfectly fair way to merge a list, but this was a good-faith effort so I'm letting it stand."

My opinion? The ALPA merger/frag policy should have two lines:

2. Merged seniority list sorted by ALPA number.

I think this method could actually result in gunplay in the pilot's lounge or the cockpit.