Wiskey Driver

I rest my case as your motives are as clear as crystal!! The MOU issue like the federal court said, usapa tailored its presentation based on which audience it was speaking too. I will wait for the new SLI to address that. Now getting back to final and binding, did at anytime Jeff F lie to Mr Nicolau or present false facts to the panel so that the west could get this so called wind fall that no one other that the east can see? I mean this so called windfall is really something because here I am a west guy and I lost a few percentage point but there is this deep rooted EAST ONLY belief that some sort of windfall took place. Could it be that this belief is really some sort sense of entitlement? I see that you have been able to greatly benefit from the AWA AAA merger and usapa's refusal to honor their obligations. That in itself was a windfall wouldn't you say? Of course you won't because you believe that what usapa has done was noble and honest. I will leave you to that train of thought as no amount of attempting to show you otherwise will prevail and only will only be met with more refusal to live up to your obligations.

WD at AWA

wiggy

R, my previous post is based entirely on what I've gathered in passing and was a speculative attempt to reconstruct, in suitably plausible and general terms, the gist of this aspect of the dispute. And, as I said above, I'm not interested in one of your scavenger hunts, or playing the game of "clue". Rub some gray cells together...disabuse me of that general and plausible construct in my previous post. I'll even give you some more material:

Insofar as I don't know the minute details, and in general and plausible terms reflecting my general state of knowledge concerning this aspect of the dispute, I, being a double breasted, gold-braided Delta van admiral with a breathtakingly massive, throbbing, all-encompassing ego surrounded by gossamer-thin, oozing skin, and a penchant for pretending to know more than the principals involved, do hereby speculatively assert:

Indisputable fact #1) A date of constructive notice, freezing status and expectations was established.

Sacrosanct principle #1). Such date was in fact a single date, and not a sliding series of dates, or a time interval whose length could be varied according to the self-interest of the parties involved.

Sacrosanct principle #2). Arbitrator has unbiased, authoritative purview over, and absolute authority as to...the establishment of a DOCN.

-Presumably that date coincided with date of announcement of the merger. If not, DOCN established somewhere between merger announcement date and end of arbitration.

-USAir recalled pilots in the interregnum between DOCN and final arbitrated list.

-USAir and AWA pilots submitted separate lists from which arbitrator constructs final, integrated list.

-USAir list submitted was dated "2007" containing pilots recalled after DOCN.

-Arbitrator constructs integrated list from separate lists submitted, segregating pilots recalled in interregnum between DOCN and date of submission of 2007 USAir list.

-List constructed from 2007 USAir list such that, effectively, USAir list of active pilots as of DOCN was used.

-Had arbitrator used the actual list of active USAir pilots as of DOCN, the list would have looked the same, with pilots recalled after DOCN being added to bottom of list.

-USAir pilots b!tch about aforementioned state of affairs.

-USAir pilots directed to Sacrosanct principles #1) and #2).

________________________________________________

EMBFlyer: "Captain, sir, excuse me but, would you mind if I get a ride to the hotel on your van?"

Capt. (Admiral) Wiggy: "Heck, son, I just solved all your seniority list problems, and now you wanna ride?"

EMBFlyer: "yes sir, and, if I may say so sir, it was a fine job you did straightening us out on that seniority issue"

Capt. Wiggy: "well heck, son, thanks, now that you mention it...you know...we all try to help out our brothers from time to time...Now, let's see here... you don't happen to have your license and medical on you, do you?....Ah, heck, nevermind...sure, hop on in here, son...get back there in the way-back, though, and keep your grimy mitts off my girls."

EMBFlyer: "Oh thank you sir! You Delta pilots are a great bunch of guys, always willing to share a ride"

Capt. Wiggy: "you're welcome, son....And by the way there, you might wanna consider getting a haircut and shining those shoes....you gotta remember, you ain't some little puddle-jumpin pip-squeak prop-pilot anymore...heck son, you're a major airline pilot now, and ya need to look and act like one...you hear me son?"

EMBFlyer: "oh yes sir! You're right, and I'd be happy to do that.....and captain, I just wanna thank you again for straightening our pilot group out...and me too...it's not everyone that would go to that trouble..."

"you're welcome son....I hope you have a couple bucks for the tip, we'll just consider that as fare for the ride..."

R57 relay

You did jump through some hoops there! Good boy, here's a treat.

Just to be sure, your original premise was that pilots with decades experience shouldn't be placed below new hires. Did I get that right?

wiggy

Why R you wily puppet-master, you got me again...Well worth it though, apparently, as I don't see you scrambling to refute any of the specifics of what I've merely deductively, and speculatively reconstructed...what happened to all that hand-wringing about the 2007 list being used? Or timelines and dates of constructive notice with the Nic? Don't tell me that reconstruction of the process and principles involved had some modicum of accuracy, such that it would cause you to go zip-lip on me...In the absence of any objections on your part we must assume its so.

The thought of your latest treat, while not exactly inducing a Pavlovian salivation in anticipation of the ease with which it will be dispensed...nevertheless, will be dispensed with, with such ease. One need only direct you to previous constructs, ie.

"Self-evident rule #1: Only those pilots with flying jobs at their airlines are actual employees of their airlines.

Self-evident rule #2: In the event of a merger, the actual employees of one company are merged with the actual employees of their merger partner."

-To which I'll add a further, actually unrelated self-evident rule, yet one that will hopefully have some probative value for you:

"Pilots employed at the same airline and belonging to the same union will have new members to their ranks added in descending sequential temporal order, with the earliest hired going above the latest...all such newly hired pilots will be placed below in seniority order to such pilots as are already employed with the airline."

Now R, a combination of these three irrefutable principles, all of which were in place at the time of your merger, should suffice to answer your question of me:

"Just to be sure, your original premise was that pilots with decades experience shouldn't be placed below new hires. Did I get that right?"

-Yes, you got that right, by reason of the third rule cited above. And any further, though thus far unstated "implications" you'd like to make are referred to the first two rules above.

R57 relay

I wanted to make you beg. Good boy. You are getting addicted to this interaction, aren't you.

Nicolau busted your premise. He integrated never furloughed US pilots, with decades of LOS(at the time of the merger) with AW pilots that had less than a year LOS(at the time of the merger). You put no qualifications on that when you stated it about the 3rd listers, did you?

You said:

"Indisputable fact #1) A date of constructive notice, freezing status and expectations was established."

But that didn't happen with us-only some pilots were frozen in their status. Nicolau used the seniority list from 2007. Not that in itself is not an issue, right? I mean if you are just cleaning up, no big deal. Funny thing though, he said he used the 2007 list because it "better reflected the merged airline." Hmmm, the merged airline parked four times the number of aircraft on the east as the west did. Big advantage-West. Despite that, we recalled pilots prior to 2007. How do you think that happened wiggy? Let me tell you. Go to the award and compare the staffing between AW and US. AW carried more pilots per aircraft. How could that be you say? Because US was massively understaffed at the time of the merger. After the merger we finally were staffed correctly while our attrition was kicking in. So by 2007 we had 300 formerly furloughed pilots recalled-the "reflection of the merged airline", but they were the only group held to their 2005 status. Brucia dissented with Nicolau on this, maybe you read it. So Nicolau didn't account for staffing differences, didn't balance the aircraft as they were at the time of the merger and slotted as if the US guy 300 from the bottom, was the bottom. He didn't give US the credit for what we brought to the merger, but held formerly furloughed pilots to their 2005 status.

You jumped on the formerly furloughed pilots, I was originally talking about pilots with decades of LOS being slotted below new hires, as you said was wrong. But since you brought it up, you said:

"Self-evident rule #1: Only those pilots with flying jobs at their airlines are actual employees of their airlines."

So how did furloughed pilots of Hughes Airwest, Mohawk and in current times, UA get slotted above active pilots? Or one of my favorites, PA Am/National.

"A second issue, labelled "explosive" by Gill, concerned the manner in which approximately 400 Pan Am pilots on furlough at the time of the merger were to be integrated. This large number of furloughees resulted from Pan Am's switch from smaller planes to B747s, the largest wide-bodied aircraft, and Pan Am's poor financial health in the preceding few years. Gill stated that this furlough situation created"a head-on clash over the relative equities as between large numbers of National airmen hired between 1968 and 1978 and actively employed at the time of the merger, and large numbers of these Pan Am furloughees with earlier dates of hire who still have recall rights but who brought no active jobs to the merger." (Gill Op. at 8).

Gill's solution was to calculate the Pan Am furloughees' length of service at the time of their recall, and to slot them into the list by comparing their length of service with that of the active airmen at that time. (An exception was made for about 34 furloughed Pan Am pilots who had received notice of recall before January 19, 1980)."


I seem to remember that you brought up Gill, but when I responded to you with what I knew about it, I never heard from you again. Is that right, because sometimes I just zone out on your rambling.


So wiggy, you know Nic screwed it up. You like to argue and see your words in print, but you know the truth.

jayme

R, you are being schooled. This guy is head and shoulders above you and you only make it worse when you act like you're the master and he's the dog. I actually have a hard time believing he's a pilot. I've never met a pilot as smart as him.

You are reaching for straws now. You look silly.

Wiskey Driver

Ok now that's two people that have told him that so in response he will only try even harder. Please tell Relay that Nic placed people based on their CURRENT POSITIONS AT THEIR AIRLINE. The merger should not and never should take people that are jr res first officer and elevate them to mid level line holding captains as relay and the east wanted. That would be a what? Come on real whats your favorite now? WINDFALL.

WD at AWA

wiggy

Ok R, I'll try to get back with you on the above...that is, if I can find some toothpicks to hold my eyelids open....

R57 relay

Yes, except for the top 500 slots reserved for US widebodies, he apparently integrated by status and category, going to the bottom of each list.

No he didn’t. He put the bottom of the AW 2007 list with the bottom of the 2005 US list. Apples and oranges. By using the 2007 list he didn't give us credit for about 50 aircraft that we brought to the merger. So he used our 2007 fleet, but our 2005 pilots. Normally that would help, right? But not with us because of our attrition and return to realistic staffing we had returned 300 pilots to flying despite removing the aircraft. For the AW side, they removed only a few aircraft and kept their same pilots.

And no, I didn't put any qualifications on that because it is implicit that former AWA pilots are now, in fact, USAir pilots, and any USAir new hires should be placed at the bottom of any list(s) composed of USAir pilots. (I think we can put that one to bed, it was a poor analogy at best, certainly not worth all the vitriol spit over it...an ill-considered "lesson" that is about as divisive as they come...it is not likely to be argued for and even less likely to be implemented, and as a practical matter, you don't accord with it yourself, it is a textbook case of comparing apples to oranges, whereby the common feature between the two is that they are both fruit...and that is being generous).

Yeah, let’s put it to bed.


It is not clear at all that LOS or DOH should carry any special consideration.

I told everyone that we flew with that we would not get LOS.

Even you, R, have abandoned the concept of pure DOH or LOS as being the sole relevant criteria for constructing seniority lists.

See above. You cannot abandon something you never had.

What concept motivates that view, R? Whenever there is a huge disparity in hiring demographics between pilot groups, (as was the case) DOH and LOS should be abandoned, as there is no correlation between that demographic (DOH) and the corresponding equities that they carry into the merger...ie. -for argument's sake, the possibility exists that a junior, low paid pilot at the bottom of one list might have a DOH or LOS equivalent to senior, highly paid pilot at the top of another list. To put them next to each other in the middle of a combined list by DOH would be to windfall increase one's seniority and equities at the expense of the other.

I agreed with Nicolau on several points, just confounded at how he put the list together after making them. Unless you want to start today and say that from this day forward, all pilots will be merged under X policy, every merger does turn on it’s own facts. We agree on that. The problem with the Nicolau is that he ignored the upcoming, huge upward movement that was coming for the east list. The west argument was “You were going out of business, you weren’t going to get it anyway!” Well, nobody knows what will happen tomorrow, but for the sake of argument, let’s say that was true. Even if US had shutdown, AW wasn’t going to get that upward movement. We didn’t go out of business, we brought our toys to the merger, it was obvious they were and would be the largest part of the new airline. Why should AW pilots get the value of it? That’s what Nicolau did, he shifted the east attrition to the west by not placing east pilots(below 500) slightly higher than the west guys. And you will notice that I said slightly, not a reserve F/O ahead of a line holding captain as WD said. I think the east MEC report to the BOD shows this clearly. Have you read it? Have you read Brucia’s dissent? I can provide you copies if you would like.

You are correct that the ALPA merger policy had no reference to DOH/LOS. It was taken out a while back, and there was a US pilot on the panel that did it. I don’t know why, but our debacle put it back in. If the Nicolau award wasn’t a debacle, then why have all the changes to merger policies occurred? Why have a panel of three arbitrators now? Could it be that many at ALPA agreed with Brucia’s dissent and realized that if he had a vote that this may have turned out differently? Even without any consideration for DOH/LOS, one of the goals was no windfall at the expense of others. That clearly happened with this arbitration.

It’s time to put it all to bed. It’s over and you will never convince me he got it right, I will never convince you he got it wrong. We never implemented the Nicolau award and the MOU says that we won’t. An arbitration panel may start with it for us, but I doubt it. We’ll see. We know arbitrators can do about anything they want, right?

R57 relay

Oh.....that....really, really............................................ .................................................. .........................stings.

So you think wiggy is "smart", huh? Smartest pilot you've ever met? So you have met him in person?

What kind of smart? Hi IQ? Lot's of common sense? Street smart?

He obviously has a large vocabulary and a flair for creative writing. But is this the creative writing forum, or airline pilot forum? When you are trying to communicate a point, I'm not sure the long winded responses and ....xxx.....xxx... are best. If it's strictly for fun...........................................sure . Maybe that's all it is for him.

He certainly has me on the writing, I suck at it.