If it's that horrible, they should go to arbitration. They really have nothing to fear.

It's the SWA guys that are fearful of arbitration, and SWA management is threatening both sides.

They are threatening the AAI guys with "non integration", which is something the AAI contract, which SWA has committed to honoring, forbids.

They are threatening the SWA guys with, well, with honoring the process agreement, which incldudes binding arbitration.

The SWA guy's fanciful interpretation of reality aside, SWA isn't going to flush a 1.5 billion dollar investment down the crapper. It costs BIG bucks to run separate ops, and it would mean re-starting several AAI departments that have already been shuttered.

That aside, there are critical FAA mandated management positions and departments that cost real money to operate. The international and overwater ops do NOT transfer...they stay with the certificate holder unless you do an SOC. To do a ETOPS from scratch takes years and costs more money...something SWA has theoretically purchased...they'd be doing it twice.

AAI cannot operate the proposed international schedule AS IS, with the fleet they have. They need more aircraft for that, let alone maintaining their current domestic schedule.

If SWA decides to go down this bizzare path, then they truly HAVE strayed from their low cost structure, and we should have nothing to fear from them.

Nu