No intention to attack you, dear Dani, especially not you, but I am trying to put things into facts. Maybe you got your infos from too far away, while I am in the middle of it, with all its goodies and badies...
For the facts about requirements, check once again
this. There you'll find the all the figures and traps about getting into SWISS, including all specials and temporary entries into its salary list, which is a tad more complicated than you told us here, Dani.
BTW: DEP into SWR has been pulled from the SWISS site just as of today. No comment about that.
About the relationships and boundaries between SWU and SWR:
Its true that the two pilot bodies exist, mainly due to SWISS appreciating the two as a 'divide et empera' thing.
The relationship is on the contrary very good, which I can witness from many different perspectives (many common courses, training, daily life, night stops, ...). I never experienced any single conflict and was very surprised, when I started some time ago, how good the relationship is. And I was quite biased towards SWR, I must admit...
I understand that the way, SWU people are 'allowed' into SWR is not up to perfection (giving up seniority etc.). But I believe that anyone coming over to SWR is quite happy, thats at least what I hear.
To sum it up:
It's not heaven and neither hell. But its quite ok to be with SWISS as a pilot with some perspective for long haul, a certain job security in the LH environment while living in Switzerland - despite the barking people
- and a management, which does things quite clever... (nobody cares if they all are SWR or SWU, which is anyway not true, btw. They are all LH...)
Enjoy, wherever you are!
N1
PS, what I forgot: 'Sacking foreigners first' and all that BS... Everything goes acc. seniority and believe me: being sacked before many, many foreigners because of seniority in 2001 assured me of that... Thats the way it is. (Cannot comment on CRX, tough. Old Moritz quite sure had his own way of running things...)