The company will bargain for every dollar they can save in this contract, as always. The real question is what will the pilot group be willing to give up. My thought is this group is not willing to give away anything that hard battles were fought to gain in years past. I don't think a concessionary contract would ever pass membership ratification, but anything is possible.

The latest battle was fought over side letters 12 and 14. The membership was quite vocal that they were not willing to sign off on a near international and ETOPS side letter without tackling the red eye and average daily guarantee questions that were obviously going to arise from this type of flying. The company realized that SL 12 was going down in flames and that would definitely jeopardize their plans to ramp up that flying as soon as regulatory hurdles were taken care of. SWAPA and the company came back to the table and drafted SL 14 to address these issues in the event that SL 12 was ratified. SL 14 offers a 15% premium for all red eye flying and more importantly defined ADG as per calendar day. So, if a red eye is added to the end of the pairing ADG will carry over and pay 6.5 for the last day. SL 12 passed and 14 is currently being voted on. Of course there is more to both of these SL's, but these are the highlights. We surely didn't get everything we wanted and I'm sure the company didn't either, but we did secure some foundational issues that were needed.