Originally Posted by tsquare

Let's talk about the contention that the pay rates are a homerun. Go over to the DALPA site and read Mullis' treatise about Homo Sapiens Day. I am sure that most people on here find him only slightly more obnoxious than me, but I wil preface this by saying that even he and I have had our dust ups. Hell I even threatened to punch him in the nose once. But I digress. In that paper, he lays out the math on how this pay increase is on a percentage basis, vastly superior to C2K, and THAT is apparently the gold standard by which this agreement was to have been measured. Or you can ignore math. There is no spin. It is mathematics, and it is spot on.

Interesting that SWA has to be leaped all in one fell swoop for this to be considered a success. Frankly, I am not worried about SWA because their merger is about to slow their progress to a crawl if not stop it altogether in it's tracks. Look at how it is gonna play out. 1) Garry Ichan has already made public statements to the fact that they need to get costs under control. 2) They just had a merger where they fortunately were able to stomp one group down and limit the monetary damage to FO pay... What I mean here is that instead of having to bring the AT captains up to SWA captain pay, they now only have to bring them up to SWA FO pay because of the way they were essentially stapled... and if we sign this TA, that will become even more apparent because they will ALL be FOs with no potential to upgrade until 2015. That was a HUGE cost savings to SWa management, but they still have an entire group (1700??) pilots that have to be brough tup to at least SOME parity) Point is that they are probably not gonna make any great leaps forward in their upcoming contract. I predict the usual 3% increase, but nothing more than that.. We'll see. Even if they DO make a great stride forward, that would be all the more reason to vote FOR this because it is a 3 year deal, and we will be back at the table with them squarely in our sights... Easy breezy...

The paranoia about the RJs is just silly. The TA recaptures mainline flying. Period. The 717s must come online before the RJs can... the percentages of mainline flying relative to DCI increase with every set of 10 RJs that are allowed. That is a CLEAR win. The 76s are gone never to return. Since we are recapturing the block hours that DCI once flew, it is a win. Percentages of hourly flying are what create jobs.. not how many baby airplanes DCI has...

The furlough protections are absolute and punitive to the company. That is a no brainer.

Guys getting wrapped around the axle about Force Majeur need to understand what that clause means. They cannot just say that just because of unforseen, unplanned for normal events require contract avoidance they will get it is just plain absurd and paranoid. It means that catastrophic events that the company will do what it needs to survive. (Got news... they can do that anyway).


So.. sorry if I was blunt before... I was because it seemed as if you were looking for confirmation of your no reasons.