The point is the pay and benefits for the ALPA member pilots, flight attendants, mechanics, ect... has steadily declined over the last twenty years yet the pay and benefits for ALPA employees has exceeded most companies in the US today. If you don't have a problem with this, then you are part of the problem.

The union is being paid to fight for benefits for those whom they represent, and they simply don't. When the going gets tough, they cave and say, "oh well, we tried". (that should be their motto. "oh well, we tried".)

When Frank Lorenzo came around sucking up airlines, you would have thought that ALPA would have had the brains to hire people with brains to stop Lorenzo. They didn't, they waited until the Eastern Airline mess blew up and then everyone lost. Why didn't they hire a team of lawyers, investment bankers and merger & aquistion boys when Lorenzo went after Continental and Peoples Express. Where were they when the Texas Air pilots were begging ALPA for help facing a kind of threat unseen before? (read Flying the Line, Vol II for more info, written, ironically by an ALPA insider)

Where has ALPA been the last twenty years, as we went from 0 seat scope clauses to now 90+.???

It seems that ALPA leadership is more interested in keeping themselves in power than in actually doing something beneficial for those they are supposed to represent.

So, ALPA can't stop seat scope increases, or pilot pay and benefits from being cut nor can not help strengthen job stability and security? Then why are we paying them dues? WHY?

You keep sayin you "gotta pay to play". Pay for what, crappy contracts, benefits and seat give backs on scope, allowing the majors to shift high paying career pilot jobs to regional starvation wages that will keep us locked into regional jobs because majors can't hire cause they can't expand??? Is that "paying to play"?

Ya, pay to play.... works great only for ALPA union employees and leaders. Ask the pilots of today's regional airlines, and the old Texas Air, Continental and Eastern how 'paying to play" worked out for them.

ALPA can't keep members updated on what is going on, can't afford to spend money to get a top negotiating team, can't afford to pay strategist to figure out how stop losing seats to scope, yet they can afford to pay 100K plus bennies for a secretary?? What the fudge?

It's time to overhaul ALPA and the leadership in the regionals in general, before the pilots haven't got anything left to "pay to play" with.

We already gave up 90+ seats over 20 years, where does it end? It ends when all the major pay and benefits are reduced to that of the regionals.

By the way, I'm sure all those people at ALPA are very nice, and work hard. But they are not working for the pilots best interest as the continual decline in the career earnings and satisfaction keeping hitting new lows. They are not the best and brightest nor do they hire the best and brightest while the airline owners do. And that is why the pilots will continue to lose.

Pilots better wake up and really get organized or get used to a continuation for a race to the bottom. It's time we stopped "paying to play" and instead started "Paying to Win".