I think we need to do a better job of looking down the road here.

Sure, at this brief moment, we enjoy a relative detente with the CEO.

Look around us today (AA, UAL, USAir, JetFU, UPS, even FedEx to some extent), and reflect on our own history. A management group that works with and respects its pilots is a very rare animal.

Nowhere else recently has a pilot group enjoyed the relative respect of management and/or a comparatively decent contract. Southwest is, of course, the blaring exception. But even they are turning into more of a "legacy" every minute, both in terms of costs and in terms of an increasingly antagonistic pilot/management relationship (that comes along with cutting costs).

Based purely on lessons of the past, our relatively good relationship with our leadership won't last.

So while some of the Widgeteers wonder aghast how a Delta pilot could possibly take exception to the company's PA edict, I look at it a different way.

When (and it's a "WHEN," not an "IF") we have a harsher management team, we don't want to be on record as merrily bending over for whatever they ram up our asses, whether it's been negotiated in the contract or not.

To those of us who think Delta loves us, who think we are beholden to follow wherever management herds us, I say: WAKE UP.

Like Scoop said: We are nothing more than a cost to be minimized (or steamrolled or taken advantage of). Let's not forget it.