There has never been an amicable merger of seniority lists. The hostilities will not end untill the last 2 people involved in the merge have retired. Its not just an AA thing. Its true of any merger. Look at Northwest/republic. TWA was still fighting with the Ozark pilots when AA bought em, USair/piedmont etc...
In AA's TWA was ratioed in from the end of the 777 list basically....
It resulted in a large block being "stapled" at the bottom but the intent was to protect the career expectations of both sides to include the people at TWA who were hired before the first bankruptcy there and some of the ozark pilots...
But that is only half the story. Their were huge fences built around the St Louis TWA operation that has kept many of the former TWA pilots at captains even though their seniority could never hold it...
The TWA merger agreement (aka Sup. CC) would have looked alot better had September 11th never happened....
Cheers
Wino