I know we have already heard the outcome, but if this doesn't make your blood boil, I'd check your pulse. The company toots it's horn......

UNITED DAILY 09-29-11:

Flight Ops to implement new procedures
We will implement the next phase of our revised flight operations procedures as scheduled as a next step toward obtaining a single operating certificate (SOC) from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

United’s training for its pilots relating to the single operating certificate is safe and professional, and United is a safe airline. The FAA, the federal agency that oversees airline safety, has carefully and professionally reviewed and approved our training.

A federal court in New York today denied a request by the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) master executive council at our UA subsidiary to delay implementation of the new procedures.

As we expected, the court did not agree with union leadership and denied the union leaders’ attempt to delay our single operating certificate. The judge’s ruling said the FAA’s earlier approval of our training plan negated ALPA claims that allowing implementation to proceed as scheduled would jeopardize safety.

“There is nothing in ALPA’s submission to support a finding that the FAA has somehow been negligent in carrying its regulatory mandate,” U.S. District Judge Sterling Johnson, Jr. wrote. “In light of the FAA’s regulatory authority and ongoing oversight of all phases of the United and Continental merger, the court has no choice but to deem the increase[d] risk to safety ALPA alleges as being too ‘remote and speculative’ to lift the union’s TRO application off the ground.”

The judge labeled as “specious” ALPA’s arguments that a System Board of Adjustment (where a grievance is pending on this issue) could not remedy a dispute over this matter.