There has never been a NATIONAL seniority list. By national I don't mean national airlines <G>...
Since there is no national seniority list, date of hire is irrelavant. What is taken into account is "Career expections". No matter how you slice the award even if it is an outright staple, the dollar value of their career has just been enhanced for every TWA pilot. The same cannot be said of every American pilot.
The hiring practices of the two airlines were very different, with American tending to hire much older pilots than TWA did. Indeed there are people at TWA with 10 more years seniority than me that are younger than me. Such is NOT the case at American.
I had expectations of finishing at a seniority number of just under 500 in NY flying the 777. That was my career expectation. Now that may not happen.
I passed repeatedly on a job at TWA because the job I had was better than TWA (more money and Better lifestyle)and waited till American called me.
If the merger was done via date of hire, Because I may not be able to hold the 777 till later in my career and because even if I do hold it I will have lost a large amount of seniority, my income for the calculations of my pension have been reduced. (A fund is highest 5 of last 10 years, and b fund is 11 percent of earnings). Therefore I have lost.
So ALPA's own merger policy which says nothing about date of hire but does say one group cannot gain at the expense of another would seam to back me up.
My favorite piece of history though is the GILL AWARD. For those not familiar with the Gill award, it dealt with PANAM and National Airlines. Basically even though Pan Am BOUGHT National lock stock and barrel (which incidentally killed Panam, and was forever known as Seawell's Folly, General Seawell ran PANAM at the time) when the arbitratator looked at the two airlines, PANAM was The incredible shrinking airline for the past decade. That was their career expection, and all the national pilots were pretty much placed infront of the PANAM pilots even though the PANAM pilots were fossils. This was because the epectations of growth were much higher for Healthy National than they had been for shrinking PANAM.
So what is really going on is that the TWA MEC is unfairly raising the expectations of their membership. But at the end of the day, money talks and Bull**** walks so eventually most of the rank and file will get their raises on Jan 1 when they switch to the GREEN BOOK (AA's contract) which APA got for them now instead of 05 like managment wanted and buy themselves a bigger boat or car and get over it.
Welcome aboard guys. Inspite of everything we are still growing at a nice clip. since the buy out almost 1000 pilots have been hired. atleast another 1000 are on the way. Even in a worst case staple (which even APA isn't advocating) every single TWA pilot is already a 767/A300 copilot making as much as a TWA captain, with no stress about how long it will last.
Nobody is looking to take away length of service. Everyone will get date of hire for pay purposes. That will equate quite a nice check.
Cheers
Wino