SEDPA

The question was why did UCH create jobs at s-CAL and not s-UAL ... Again, that doesn't matter because the arbs dictated that we in effect share everything post MAD. I have made ZERO reference to relative position pre and/or post merger, nor made any comment w/reference to the fairness or equitability of the award. Simply, in reference to hundreds of arbitrations of the past decades, rarely, almost never, have active pilots been integrated above or with active pilots ... your own MC/MEC characterized the award as "unprecedented" ... any equity advantage a CAL guy had at MAD was taken and given to the UAL guys to pay for this "unprecedented" award ... call it what ever you want, but history clearly shows the UAL furloughed pilots were treated way differently than almost everyone of their predecessors in ALPA history.

LAX Pilot

United didn't "buy" CAL.

It was a marriage.

United was the man, which is why CAL was forced to take on his name. If CAL has been the man we'd be called Continental, but we're not. We're United.

CAL was the woman. Lots of things point to this.

1) CAL was "expecting". They were "expecting" to staple about 3,000 United pilots to the bottom of the list. They were also "expecting" to keep getting all of the upgrades for the near future, but unfortunately the man stepped in and stopped all that.

2) CAL was playing "hard to get". Like "hard to get" the dates their pilots actually started at mainline. And "hard to get" them to negotiate the contract in a timely manner without ridiculous self SLI helping elements.

3) CAL was bad at math. Like a 747 should pay the same as a 767 even though one weighs almost twice as much at takeoff as the other one. Or one payrate for one type of 757 and another one for a different type of 757.

4) CAL was unpredictable like a woman. Hiring pilots, then furloughing pilots, then hiring pilots again.

5) CAL was spending money it didn't have. CAL couldn't resist the shiny new airplanes, and decided to go out to the mall and buy a bunch of new planes and then figure out later how to pay for them all.

6) CAL asked "Does this hat make me look fat?" The man answered "No honey, it just makes all your other clothes look too small".

So its very clear that CAL wasn't bought by UAL. instead it was a marriage and like any good marriage the man is now wishing he'd have married that US Air chick instead.

Zoomie

You're right Sunvox.

That sounds great to post more information, but I didn't need to use additional facts. All these facts you suggest I post have been posted, ad nauseum. Go back and read the thousands of posts over the last 12 months... the money, the aircraft orders, the growth, etc.

It doesn't matter as the guys at L-UAL have their blinders on and choose to believe that CAL was just like them. However, if CAL was just like UAL, the merger would have gone exactly like it did at DL/NWA or Southwest/Airtran, that is UAL would have dictated the terms of the merger. Tilton would have been in charge and pretty much the CAL side would have to adopt the UAL way of doing things. DL told NWA the way it was going to be, and they were only slightly larger. SWA powned Airtran and had them kneel at the LUV altar. Why was this? Why did CAL even have a voice during the merger? I agree that back in 2001, UAL would have done the same to CAL and gone back for more after eating up CAL. I also don't try and say UAL was going to fail. They were much healthier than AA and USAir at MAD, and things were starting to turn around for you guys. Things had already turned around for CAL, then the recession hit. During the recession, DAL lost over $2 billion, not even close to what either CAL or UAL lost combined, but look at them now, they are powning UAL.

However, strangely, with CAL, the big carrier who was on the up and up, according to UAL pilots and approximately 0 people in the investment community, had the merger dictated by the little guy, run by the little guy's leader.

My sarcasm in the last post was meant for some of those that still believe that UAL saved CAL, which is just revisionist history at best.

Another question that puzzles me is why in the world would CAL pilots be "against" the merger whereas UAL pilots seemed to relish the thought. It couldn't possibly be because CAL had a nice plan to grow the airline whereas UAL only had a plan to merge their airline. So CAL got its growth and UAL got its merger, however the growth that the pilots at CAL had was sacrificed and now that growth will be used mostly to replace UALs aging fleet for years to come. We're no longer getting that growth for a long time, or ever since we got it through merging.

When age 65 passed in 2007, we had a plan to grow, and much of that growth was through the 787 and additionally through some domestic feed through brand new 737s. All these aircraft were ordered around 2006 time frame, 4 years before the MAD and well before the merger at any legacies was even feasible. Had it not been for the economic downturn, none of these mergers would have been approved by the DOJ.

I'm not saying it's unfair, its reality.

You really think CAL wasn't going to get the aircraft orders without UAL? You didn't seem to address that fact. What was CAL going to do with all its aircraft orders absent a merger?

Zoomie

I guess this was an attempt at humor. Don't quit your day job as its neither witty or funny.

It's interesting that most people show the sign of a good SLI is both sides seem ****ed at the SLI, however that hasn't happened here. Almost no one in the bottom half of the CAL list thinks the SLI is fair, but obviously we're biased.

On the other hand, most the UAL bottom guys and especially the furloughs think its fair, since the furloughs didn't get stapled. I talked to a handful of UAL pilots who had no expectations and expected to get stapled, which I would argue most people would have guessed if betting money. The only arguments I hear about ****ed off people are ones that are upset they are next to a guy who was hired 5-10 years after them, but that same person beside them on the list had a much better seniority at his/her respective company and much greater bidding power.

I don't argue that our MC did a good job. I saw our argument, and thought it was total BS and would never fly. I wasn't about to come on the APC and post something stupid as we saw forum posts used as evidence in the SLI. Why would CAL guys cut their own MC off at the knees by stating that their proposal of stapling the bottom 3000 was stupid in front of everyone. I can say behind closed doors we did say that too each other.

Everyone knew that the CAL argument was BS (except maybe our MC). They went all in with a pocket queens after "the turn". The UAL committee was holding pocket twos and then when the "river" showed up as a two, CAL lost and UAL had 3 of a kind.

The unknown card in this deck here was the interpretation of "longevity". UAL defined it one way, CAL defined it another, and ALPA let the arbitrator decide, which is BS.

Had ALPA defined longevity (which it didn't since chances are CAL would have decerted ALPA with the UAL definition of longevity) when it changed the policy, I can assure you the strategy the CAL MC took would have been a lot different. The CAL MC chairman was one of two that re-wrote the policy, but when time came to defining the term, the arbitrator thought that the guy who wrote the policy was wrong.

LAX Pilot

Neither is anyone in the bottom half of the UAL list. ALL of us are paired with pilots hired WELL AFTER US.

SEDPA

Which, unlike how the UAL furloughed pilots were treated, is not "unprecedented" in ALPA integration history ... it has been much more common to have an award with minimal "relative" movement than it is do have DOH order.

Zoomie

Well, up until last Monday, date of hire hasn't mattered much and longevity was undefined with the new policy. The arbitrators went with the UAL interpretation since Moak refused to define it for them.

Status for furloughs was also undefined.

Well, the precedence is set now. Congrats. Like I've said, you won and so did ALPA.

I think we all knew that ALPA was on notice had the tables been turned in the other direction.

cadetdrivr

You obviously have not been paying attention?

The Pinnacle/Mesaba/Colgan ISL that preceded our integration was the first ISL using the "new" ALPA policy. In that case the arbitrator determined that straight DOH (i.e. 100% longevity) within each stove-piped category was appropriate considering the addition of longevity to the policy. He even integrated furloughed pilots with active pilots within their FO category by DOH. And the arbitrator involved was not some unknown newcomer as he previously chaired the DAL/NWA panel that used the prior policy.

Since there already was a precedent I'm presuming that senior UAL pilots (top 20%) and the bottom 2/3s of the CAL list are grateful that UAL did not propose the 100% longevity precedent nor did the arbitrators use it and instead settled on the hybrid 65/35%.

LAX Pilot

They should have proposed 65% longevity and 35% status and category then have the arbitrators change it to 50/50 to be "fair".

GoCats67

If you don't think I addressed that I am sorry. I will be more blunt. They were going to continue to take new 737s until they finished parking the 737-500s and then they would have stopped!!! Why because aircraft orders are good for future planning, but when the time to take the deliveries comes, all that matters is do you have routes that you can fly them on while making money. If you do not, then you cancel/delay the order! Look recently at Virgin America for that example.

I am not sure what you are referring to that 0 analysts thought United was on the "up and up." Just read the transcripts of the ISL testimony and you will find examples of analysts saying UA was the stronger carrier as well as examples of analysts saying CAL was the stronger carrier, but what virtually every analyst(all that I've seen) did agree on was that both UA and CAL would be better off with the merger than without one. By that they mean that the economic opportunities for growth are better for both carriers with the merger. You somehow seem to think that the basic "laws" of business would not have applied to CAL if the merger hadn't happened. As the ACTUAL flight schedule shows, the flying on CAL routes has shrunk. This is despite having all the economic advantages of the merger to support the flying. To say that your "growth plan" would have somehow resulted in your ability to fly profitably on routes that the combined carrier couldn't, defies all logic and again every reasonable business assessment of the situation.

I guess there will be no convincing you that the reality of the flying on CAL routes today is truly the best case of what the flying could have been as a stand alone carrier. But the economics of the flying are what they are today and there is no reasonable expectation that somehow CAL would have had a better revenue generating capability alone than they have as part of the merger.

I don't know any pilots on the UA side that were excited about merging. Would we prefer CAL over US, yes. Did we want to get rid of Glenn, yes. But don't confuse chossing the lessor of evils as excitment.

We will obviously never know what exactly would have happened if UA had merged with US and CAL had stayed alone. However, we can look at what has happened on our routes to this point. That clearly shows that the legacy UAL routes have been where the good opportunities were. As you correctly state in your post, the guys making the decisions at this point are mostly the former CAL management. Those folks have came to the conclusion that it was not economically viable to fly so much on the CAL routes but was economically viable to increase flying on the UA routes. I don't see anyway to come to a defensable business conclusion that those same individuals would have gone ahead with an expansion on the same routes that were not economically sustainable at the pre-merger level. Again this is no longer a "plan" this is reality!!!

Yes I am in the bottom part of the UA list (though never furloughed) I am not happy with the list one bit, but it is part of what we all signed up for when we got into this glorious career, so I am going forward. I was trying to stay out of all of this mess, however, when people start throwing around "gift", "windfall", "on CAL's Pilots backs", It tends to boil my blood.