Originally Posted by Bzzt

Do you really think the pilots have any say at all in whether or not the regionals exist? If you do I think you're vastly overestimating your role in this machine. If contracts truly mattered to regional pilots not a single person would go to Mesa, but they're filling classes. As long as the mainline carrot exists there will be no shortage of pilots trading short term pain for PIC time and the shot at a major.

As to whether or not I believe the no voters thought there would be pain, I don't. I believe the no voters got caught up in the union propaganda of a pilot shortage. The reason I believe this is because a lot of the most vocal no voters are the ones now desperate for an "announcement". The pilot group made a calculated gamble given the information we had at the time. We lost the gamble, it's time to pay the debt.