According to the Dallas Morning News, Southwest CEO Gary Kelly says that as a result of the Airtran ALPA MEC decision to not have their membership vote on the proposed integration agreement, tens of millions of dollars in financial incentives are now off the table.

One thing about Southwest and its employees, even its unions, they all understand that to experience reward, the deal has to get done.

Apparently Airtran-ALPA didn’t take that into consideration.  What will be amusing is if Airtran-ALPA thinks that those incentives will go back on the table.  My guess?  They won’t.  Those incentives were for a quick deal and a smooth integration.  Southwest doesn’t pay for mediocre. 

No, really, they don’t.  And SWA employees know that.  I do wonder just how hard SWAPA tried to sell the deal to Airtran-ALPA.  I also wonder if there will be a backlash against Airtran-ALPA leadership at this point.  If I were an Airtran pilot and I had the opportunity to A) go to work for SWA and B) earn not just more money but a lot more money and C) I just lost my one shot at real financial reward for doing the deal, I would be pretty unhappy. 

Next up is mediation between the two parties and if that doesn’t work, then we see binding arbitration.  The longer this takes, the less Airtran pilots will see in reward.  Will there be a better seniority deal on the table?  I don’t know.  I’ve never been able to find out the details but I suspect that the deal only gets worse from here on out.  SWAPA approaches negotiations with a sense of honor and I doubt seriously they find Airtran-ALPA’s behaviour funny or very forgiveable.

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