Al,
Thanks for posting this. I'm amazed that no one else has commented. This airline is in an incredible healthy position as it emerges from bankruptcy. The new AAL has over 10 Billion dollars in cash, enough that the shareholders believe that it is an excess for operations and would like to see some of it returned. On top of that, revenues will continue to increase due to fees and rising ticket prices stemming from greater demand but continued flat to slightly higher capacity.
What caught my attention was that in the quarterly conference call Doug answered an analysts question stating that to contract for the pilots was complete. We are all chipping in our two cents on how the SLI should be done, something that is mostly out of our control, but maybe what we should be doing is contacting our reps and suggesting what we would like to see in the JCBA. We should make sure that the JCBA is on our reps minds and possible remind those who we will be negotiating with. In a world of revenue growth and continued record profits in for the foreseeable future we may never have a better opportunity to negotiate a fair piece of this success. The MOU may have been a good start but it may be a small drop in the bucket in the long term.