Am I the only one who missed the pilots of Southwest and Airtran ratifying their seniority agreement? My excuse was a weeklong bootcamp training session at my company. What’s yours?

The highlights are that both groups overwhelming approved the agreement with in excess of 90% of both groups voting and inexcess of 80% of each voting group saying “Yes”.

This is good for Southwest, Southwest’s pilots and Airtran’s pilots. Conflict erodes profits and eroded profits at Southwest hurt everyone’s fortunes. More importantly, there is a template for coming to agreements among other unions.

Furthermore, Southwest can get on with the business of harmonizing and integrating Airtran. The sooner that gets done, the sooner the synergies of the merger are realized.

The question is this: Will the other unions avoid the mistakes that Airtran’s ALPA group made?

Filed under: Airline News by ajax