Seniority Means Little

TWA's name has been long gone from commercial airliners since American Airlines plucked the company from bankruptcy two years ago. Dan Cooney worries that within months, his pilot's job - along with most vestiges of TWA - will also fall by the wayside.

Standing By To Be Unemployed

With a wife and two teenage daughters, Cooney expects to be jobless by this summer in American's cost-cutting plan to shed 2,500 pilots jobs -- one-fifth of its flying force - and about 2,000 flight-attendant positions, nearly all of the latter at Lambert Airport.

In the jetwash of such concessions by unions hoping to spare Texas-based AMR Corp. from bankruptcy, Cooney and other former TWA pilots woven - they say unfairly - into American's ranks are mapping out new livelihoods.

Cooney feels betrayed by American parent AMR Corp., the Fort Worth-based company ex-TWA workers say pledged to treat them fairly and equitably after American bought up most of St. Louis-based TWA in early 2001.

"The end result is that they put almost all TWA employees at the bottom of the seniority list," setting them up to be the first laid off, Cooney said Thursday from his home in the St. Louis suburb of St. Charles.

Blaming APA

American spokesman Bruce Hicks said a pilots union - not the airline - "was solely responsible" for integrating TWA's pilots into American's fold by seniority.

With 15 years of piloting with TWA and American, Cooney believes he should have seniority -- and more pressing, job security -- at American. But he says he's being shown the door while American rookies are being kept.

"I'm being laid off while a 24-year-old kid is keeping his job. Is that fair and equitable?" said Cooney, 49, worrying he may lose his home with his job. "I feel I've been robbed and cheated."

American said Tuesday it had reached tentative deals with its three most-important labor groups for $1.8 billion in concessions, including layoffs of about 2,500 pilots. As many as 600 pilots in St. Louis alone could be affected. All of American's roughly 1,800 St. Louis-based flight attendants will be among the more than 2,000 likely to be furloughed. American, with 99,000 employees, has lost nearly $5.3 billion in the past two years.

These days, "there are no aviation jobs to replace this job," said Jeff Darnall, a St. Louis-based American Airlines pilot who spent more than a decade with TWA during his 27-year flying career. "This is essentially a career-ending set of circumstances."

Darnall, 45, of Jacksonville, Fla., heads TWA Pilots, a 1,700-member advocacy group that has pressed Congress and American to reconsider the company's seniority system.

No Deal

After the 2001 merger of TWA and American, the union that represented TWA's pilots, the Air Line Pilots Association, was unable to reach a deal with the union for American's pilots on how the two work forces would combine. As a result, American's union, the APA, unilaterally adopted its own seniority list, putting six out of 10 TWA pilots at the bottom of the list.

Darnall, once a TWA captain, within a year with American was bumped down to first officer in what he called "the most onerous integration in the history of the airline business."

Said Cooney: "With American, I stayed a captain, then was pushed back to co-pilot, soon to be pushed back to the street."

FMI: www.aa.com