Originally Posted by alfaromeo

After the rejected TA and the judge's ruling, the American pilots should probably reconsider where they are. If any American pilot has not read the ruling they should read it today. From what I read the judge said:

• American went bankrupt because their network was too small and they did not have enough feed. This has caused a serious revenue problem as the high value customers are abandoning them. Part of the reorganization will be to increase code sharing and RJ flying to fix that (did you read that Mesabah? Your crew room lawyering is once again shown to be wrong)
• He does not care if the APA thinks that merging with US Airways is the best course of action, no merger has been agreed to
• The company's witnesses were more credible than the APA's
• Under Chapter 11, necessary changes do not mean the minimum to survive, it means enough changes to create a successful company
• The APA's theory of "convergence", or that other labor groups would eventually catch up to their costs is not a credible plan of reorganization
• Management does not have to lower their cost reduction targets to show good faith bargaining

The creditor's committee just spoke up also. Remember the current owners of the company, the stock holders are getting wiped out. The creditors are going to be the new owners. That is why they have a say about what goes on. This is what they said:

• We supported labor getting a claim (ownership stake) in the new AMR, but only if they added value through agreeing to a contract
• If the APA does not add any value with a rejection, they will get no ownership
• Each day that goes along, value is slipping out of the APA's hands

These are not my words, those are the words of the people who hold your fate in their hands.


The judge's ruling has basically shattered all of the forum ideas about how the APA would prevail. The last and most brain dead forum idea is that American needs them to sign a contract so badly, they will come crawling back to negotiate. This is the most ridiculous statement to date. They don't need you to have a deal, they are getting their own deal sewn up by the judge in about two weeks.


So you have two options:

1. Agree to a crappy contract that contains a substantial claim in the reorganized American. Just to reiterate, the 13% claim that the Delta pilots got from their bankruptcy netted out to $1,300,000,000. That's a lot of zeroes there.
2. Accept and even worse contract rejection and get no claim

Financially, there is no choice, Option 1 is the only way to go. Emotionally, if the American pilots feel the need to throw away money in order to make some statement to somebody somewhere, then you can make that choice.