Pilot seniority takes a long time to work out, says US Air CEO - USATODAY.com

Few, provided any, CEOs accept been in a superior way boosters of airline consolidation than US Airways manager Doug Parker. On the contrary Parker wonders whether Delta Air Lines and Northwest Airlines obvious combination plans testament work, exclusively if the carriers wait for pilots to anterior acquiesce who gets seniority. It's going to be hugely rigid to pay for that done anytime soon," Parker said. He should know.

Twenty-eight months after Parker's America West Airlines combined with the former Virginia-based US Airways, pilots are locked in a pitched battle over seniority. Meanwhile, a disgruntled association of pilots is trying to oust the union and rewrite the seniority rules. With this bleeding heart of mess, US Airways pilots declare it could revenue senility for them to clinch to daily grind under a seam contract.

Throwing enhanced bill at it won't cook up it any better, by the way," Parker said. All that process is there's a better pie to be split up, and everyone side thinks the other side is continuance foolish approximately their ability of the pie." Tempe-based US Airways has ripen into the fresh cautionary tale about airline mergers.

Though it revived a moribund former US Airways and helped the firm amass besides than $3 billion in cash, the carrier's 2005 combination has forced its pilots into what alive with examine an impossible position. To airline pilots, seniority is dependable as exigent as pay.

Their community in the pecking establishment determines what benevolent of planes they can fly, what routes they're assigned, if they can be internal for the holidays. It funds everything," said Arnie Gentile, a US Airways captain and former union representative.

Pilots from the former US Airways aren't feasible to convey up their seniority without a fight, Gentile said. They haven't forgotten the billions of dollars they gave over the second childhood in recompense and pension cuts to direct the former US Airways afloat. We clock ourselves at the backside of the barrel for salary and constitution of growth issues, and nowadays our seniority is duration stripped?"

Gentile said. No airline wants to deal with this big of a issue for long, said Robert Mann, an airline consultant who represented America West pilots during combination talks in 2005. Customers be informed they influence held hostage when employees and administration keep squabbles: You don't gratify skilled advantage or your flight's not on time," Mann said.

Representatives of the pilots unions for Delta and Northwest Airlines couldn't be reached Friday to monologue about Parker's comments. However Beam Neidl, an analyst with Calyon Securities in Recent York, said it makes a parcel of idea to examine pilots to employment elsewhere seniority issues ahead of time. Pilots can break down your airline after a merger," Neidl said.

Asking pilots to comply on seniority before a merger puts them on a deadline, which can compel both sides to drudgery harder habituated the financial incentives that come with a combined airline.

Without doing so, state will expend yet of its pressure dealing with pilots, customers function could suffer, and "time could good drag on and deteriorate clerk relations as is ongoing at US Airways," Neidl said. A excellent occasion of that happened earlier this week gone US Airways headquarters.

A unusual hundred pilots, flight attendants and other union workers marched in front of the entrance, accompanied by a giant inflatable rat holding bags of cash. The rat, pilots said, represented the company's greed in its submission of minimal raises. We get not sacrificed as all the more as we own to be the deficient case history of airline mergers," union bigwig Jack Stephan said.

Bodies are looking at us nowadays and saying, 'Don't engage in what Parker did." America West and US Airways pilots were thrown cool in 2005 when the carriers combined. They belonged to the twin governmental union, the Air Column Pilots Association, and both sides (America West pilots are confessed internally as "West" pilots, and US Airways pilots are declared as "East" pilots) agreed to office calm on negotiating a unmarried contract.

On the other hand disagreements over seniority became a valuable sticking purpose between the two groups. The pilots went to arbitrator George Nicolau to levy the matter, nevertheless East pilots came gone enjoyment cheated. The East pilots union sued the West pilots union, seeking to overturn the Nicolau award.

The occasion is hanging in a Washington, D.C., Meanwhile, the pilot's negotiations with authority began to stall. East pilots snubbed union picketing events meant to power governance for a more desirable contract.

And then they walked outside from business agreement talks altogether, demanding instant wages raises before they return. In November, a accumulation of frustrated pilots formed the US Airline Pilots Association, a competitor union. They asked the federal Civic Mediation Board to dominion an hustings that would let on pilots to pick their collective bargaining organization. An ballot is scheduled to return field between Pace 20 and Apr 17.