Robert A. "Bob" Siegel

O'Melveny selected Siegel last year to head its newly established aviation practice. The firm represents aviation entities, including airlines and airports, with an aggregate value of nearly $20 billion. "I'm full-time in representing airlines as it is," Siegel said. "So when we recognized that we have a lot of lawyers in the aviation area, the firm asked me to help organize it. Working with the airlines and airports as much as we have, we felt we could provide better and more efficient service by having an organized group." The cross-discipline team includes about 50 attorneys from several practice areas.

So he gave labor advice as part of the team that counseled Alaska Air Group Inc. in its $2.6 billion acquisition of Virgin America Inc., a deal that closed early this year.

And Siegel secured a win for client American Airlines Group Inc. at the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in March in one of the first appellate decisions over the McCaskill-Bond amendment to the Federal Aviation Act. The amendment was enacted in 2007 to ensure that airline mergers include the fair and equitable integration of employee seniority lists.

"When airline deregulation came along in 1978, there were no rules for integrating pilot and flight attendant and mechanic seniority lists," Siegel said. "Now, we have the requirement for a fair process." The 2nd Circuit opinion grew out of the 2013 American Airlines and US Airways Group merger. A group of flight attendants who had previously worked at TWA sued the new American Airlines, contending that the TWA flight attendants were not fairly integrated into the pre-merger seniority list a decade earlier in American Airlines' acquisition of TWA.

"My task was to advise the company on how it should comply with McCaskill-Bond," Siegel said, "to make sure the two unions had a fair voice at the table. Fortunately, the 2nd Circuit held that we had done that." The circuit panel affirmed a district judge's finding that the new American Airlines had acted properly when it accepted the seniority list negotiated in the US Airways merger, and that any allegations of previous wrongdoing were not properly at issue. Flight Attendant in Reunion v. American Airlines Inc., 813 F.3rd 468 (2nd Cir., filed May 15, 2015)

Siegel said the opinion will be useful as he proceeds to sort out labor issues in the Alaska-Virgin America acquisition. "These things can take a long time," he said. "We're still working on part of the labor fallout from the United Airlines merger with Continental," a pact forged in 2010.

The work remains interesting and challenging, Siegel said. "I do enjoy what I do. And I do have a lot of airline miles."

— John Roemer