Former America West Pilots Win in Court Ruling Over Legacy US Airways Pilots

http://industry.bnet.com/travel/10001910/former-america-west-pilots-win-in-court-ruling-over-legacy-us-airways-pilots/

More than three and a half years since America West and US Airways merged, the integration of the pilot groups continues to inch forward very, very slowly. A big milestone was reached yesterday when the courts finally ruled in favor of the former America West pilots. It’s about time. But of course, this is still far from over.

Before I get into yesterday’s news, how about a brief history? There was no question that merging these two groups would be difficult. The relatively junior America West pilots clearly would have different interests from the far more senior US Airways pilots. Unsurprisingly, the big sticking point was in regards to how to integrate seniority. It went to binding arbitration via the union (both were represented by ALPA), and a verdict was reached that made adjustments for the fact that the America West pilots had much less seniority. This blended seniority is similar to what Delta and Northwest agreed to, or so I understand.

The old US Airways pilots didn’t like this, so they decided to ignore that whole “binding” part of the arbitration. They opted to leave the union and start their own instead. The America West pilots were powerless to stop it, because the US Airways pilots had enough votes to overrule anything the America West pilots would have wanted. After the vote, USAPA was brought in as the new, independent union and the US Airways guys declared the seniority ruling to be void.

As you can imagine, this was a complete nightmare for the America West pilots who were unable to stop something that was an awful idea in the first place. So they did what they could, and they took the US Airways pilots to court to force them to accept the seniority ruling and actually implement it.

Yesterday, there was a unanimous ruling in favor of the America West pilots, so you’d think this would be done right? Of course not. The USAPA put out a press release immediately that came off as incredibly whiny.

FULL story at link.