No. That is not what I was referring to. I was talking strategy... proactive appeasement (that's what I like to call DALPA's approach over the past 8 years) or nuclear bomb (the burn the house down just because you're ****ed mentality). IMO, neither of those are going to get us where we need to be. The first one has been tried for 8 years, and we're currently 32%+ BELOW the buying power we had before we took that draconian 32.5% pay cut almost a decade ago! UNSAT. The second approach (burn the house down) is just stupid... akin to shooting oneself in the foot.

Of course there's always going to be give and take. That's just life. The problem is that, on the "give and take ledger", we've done WAY more giving than taking. It's time to even it out more. And we've got a lot of evening out to do! We took a 42% cumulative pay cut, lost our pension, and had thousands of our jobs outsourced. A 42% cut requires a 73% increase on day one just to get back to square one. I know you are tired of my broken record on that... but it is A FACT. And a fact we simply cannot afford to ignore if we are going to restore this profession and put our careers back on track. DALPA has been ignoring this fact (even doing everything they can to distract us from it) for way too long. IMO, that has done tremendous damage to our prospects for restoration.

I don't know exactly what DPA will or will not do. I suppose that is to be determined once they become our representative and the process begins of taking input, developing an objective, and then developing specific plans and strategies to achieve the objective. It will be a difficult, uphill battle... especially given the lower expectations that DALPA has allowed to be set for management and for many in our pilot group. It will take being very clear to all concerned that we do not accept bankruptcy as a reset and that we expect to get our profession and our careers back on track. It will most likely take some assertiveness on our part. We will have to earn back the respect of management, after spending almost a decade losing it by demonstrating that we don't really respect ourselves and our profession that much.