Is it your position that AA management would have been happy to come to the table with a reasonable offer four years ago had APA been more "proactively engaged"? Your statment seems to imply that the negotiating methods of the APA are wholly are largely to blame for the lack of progress at AA.

I don't think it's valid to point to the slow pace in the AA negotiations as a failure of their union. The delay tactic given to management by the RLA was going to be used as long as it worked to the advantage of AA management, adversarial relationship or no. I think it is entirely more likely that AA management's willingness to negotiate has been brought about by the soon to be changing business envorinment and overall state of the industry (pilot retirements, the United Continental merger, the increasing profitability of Delta) rather than any change in APA methods.

In my book, the ability of APA and the American pilots to fight through this delay is to be applauded. It was (IMHO) probably necessary to achieve the best possible outcome.