You're not wrong Lewis, from St Louis Post-Dispatch(15/8):
"Former Trans World Airlines pilots now flying for American Airlines are calling on that carrier and Congress to revisit their complaints about a seniority system that puts them first in line for layoffs.
Roughly 60 percent of TWA's 2,100 pilots were placed at the bottom of the seniority list at American, even though most had substantially more years of service than the American crew members directly above them.
As a result, the ex-TWA pilots will bear the full impact of the 550 pilot layoffs American announced as part of a major restructuring this week. Those layoffs will affect former TWA pilots hired as early as 1996.
"TWA brought value to American," said Jeff Darnall, one of the 40 or so pilots who rallied Wednesday at Lambert Field to voice their concerns. "To treat its employees as having less value than newly hired employees is arrogant and unfair."
Most former TWA flight attendants also lost their seniority in the change of ownership. American has warned that fleet and schedule cuts will create 2,500 excess flight attendant positions by the end of the year, putting those ex-TWA workers first in line for furloughs.
American announced Tuesday that it would reduce its work force by 6 percent -- or 7,000 people -- cut capacity by 9 percent and retire 83 aircraft in a bid to reverse losses and respond to changing industry economics.
More than 300 ex-TWA pilots out of 2,100 based at Lambert were laid off in the months after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11.
Pilot Sally Young said the latest round of cuts would be devastating to workers assigned to American's St. Louis hub.
"We are now facing a 40 percent reduction . . . in the St. Louis employee group, as opposed to 4 percent for the American employee group," said Young, who joined TWA in 1989. "This is neither fair nor equitable to the St. Louis employees and the St. Louis area," she said.
Officials for the Allied Pilots Association and the Association of Professional Flight Attendants, the unions representing cockpit and cabin crews at American, noted this week that the former TWA workers might be without jobs already were it not for American.
TWA was running low on cash before its deal with American, and might have gone out of business had it tried to remain independent.
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In announcing American's broader restructuring Tuesday, Chairman Donald Carty acknowledged that the company's long-standing business model seemed to be broken.
"It's our expectation that demand will be very soft and the economy will remain uncertain for some time," Carty said in a message to employees. "Make no mistake about it: Change at American will continue."
Change was a constant at TWA in the decade leading up to its deal with American. Despite three bankruptcies, six management teams and an unbroken string of losses, the airline remained aloft.
Pilots, flight attendants and other employees who accepted concessions to keep TWA in business thought last year's deal with American would bring them secure futures, said Darnall, founder and president of TWA Pilots Inc., a group that represents the interests of ex-TWA workers.
But the union that represented TWA's pilots, the Air Line Pilots Association, was unable to reach an agreement with the union that represents American's pilots on how the two work forces would combine.
As a result, American's union, the Allied Pilots Association, unilaterally adopted its own seniority list, which put six out of 10 TWA pilots at the bottom of the list.
Other, more senior TWA pilots were put higher up on the list, subject to certain rules and restrictions.
TWA's flight attendants ran into the same sort of problems. They are mounting a legal challenge in federal court in New York.
Former U.S. Rep Jim Talent, the Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate, spoke at Wednesday's event. He said he was surprised to learn that the approach American's unions took to the integration of the seniority lists was legal.
"This is an example of a system that failed because it failed to be fair," Talent said in a prepared statement. "The American Airlines officials in Fort Worth should agree to go back to the negotiating table and design a compromise on the seniority issue so that former TWA pilots and flight attendants in Missouri get a fair hearing and a fair deal."
Dave Coyne, a TWA captain who lost 12 years of seniority in the American deal, said putting highly skilled, veteran workers below newer employees makes no sense, especially in a business where experience and safety are directly related.
"In any other industry," he said, "when one company acquires another company, they don't put all the employees of the acquired company in the mailroom and say, 'Good luck. Work your way back up.'"