We are the big boys at the mainline level and we get what we want.

While we all moan and complain about concessions, the unfortunate truth is that we're once again very near the top of our profession thanks to all the interim negotiations and the fact we leveraged the merger pretty well. We've also been smart to seek production balances which are the sort of "inclusive scope" which will help us grow in the future. Overall, the profession, and the middle class of our nation is in decline. We can't separate ourselves from macroeconomic reality forever.

I can only explain my own reasons for not supporting the DPA. Chief among those reasons is that the DPA consistently misidentifies the problem and the solution. Our profession is at too critical a stage to get it wrong.

We can't blame ALPA National for our scope problems when we thought up our scope, we negotiated it and we ratified it. Our problem has been internal and that's where the fix must be applied as well. Issues like 100 seat scope and fixing Joint Venture language are LOCAL issues. The Comair pilots, nor ALPA National, forced us to grant a three year enforcement window on our AF/KLM language. We did that.

I would be pleased to vote for several of the DPA Officers as Status Reps and would hope they would go up the command within D-ALPA.