Originally Posted by 3662forlife

IBT’s big selling point is that it is a “Bottom up” organization and ALPA is a “Top down” organization. I understand why you would ask this question.

That sounds good but it doesn’t always happen that way with IBT.


Looking in to this, I asked a friend that is a Frontier pilot for his take. He emailed these three paragraphs to me, I put it in quotes because I wasn’t there:

“The “Local” was in Trusteeship. The leaders of FAPA approached National, seeking some level of anatomy within the IBT. This wasn’t a novel concept, National, previously and subsequently, accepted and endorsed this (they may have even proposed it), with other merging employee groups including the Polar and Atlas pilots, Frontier/RAH/MEA Flight Attendants and employee groups with different representative organizations outside of aviation.

The first meeting went well and they scheduled a second meeting. National then spoke with the “Trusteeship” or the “Trustee” (Doug Turner), the second meeting cancelled and those options suddenly disappeared.

I don’t recall if “The Slate” was up and running at that time or not. We (FAPA) actually liked and respected “The Slate”, especially Pat Gannon.”


From our side (RAH pilots) IBT filed a lawsuit against Frontier and RAH over a Frontier/FAPA LOA without informing or consulting our EBoard. They read about it somewhere afterwards.

IBT also told the EBoard that we would have to vote on RAH’s “Last, Best and Final Offer.” IBT didn’t discuss this with the EBoard and the EBoard didn’t know about it or that IBT’s C&B’s required a vote on all LBFO’s. RAH kept changing their LBFO, so there was no vote.
My understanding is that IBT C&B does require a vote, as you said. "Not knowing" is not the fault of the IBT, but of the EBoard. The old "ignorance of the law is no excuse" bit. I had heard they (357) had refused to use IBT counsel during negotiations and used their own outside guy. Seems like that might have been a big mistake if the outside lawyer never looked it up and told them.

Two busts in the sim for upgrade, a refusal by him to take a 170 (his original airplane) FO oral then a refusal by a Check Airmen to recommend him for an oral.
That's troublesome.

I agree. The EBoard isn’t saying anything except that RAH failed to follow Article 18, “RESOLUTION OF DISPUTES” in the CBA.

IBT may be involved but the EBoard isn’t talking about it.
Even if they are, the devil will be in the paperwork from the training. Unions can't fix some things. Not sure of their language, but at most other carriers, two busts is bad juju. One assumes that there was additional training given between #1 & #2, so busting the second is problematic. A refusal to take an oral and a refusal to sign off??? Like I said, don't know their language, but it sounds like this guy may have put the company in a position where they had no options and if he did it in hopes of winning an arbitration based on not following the language, he may get a bad shock from an arbitrator. They don't like being step up.

Interesting comment and a good point. So far in 17 pages on the MB, no one has come forward to defend him as a pilot…