Originally Posted by Alan Shore

Having finally read the article with the offending quotes, I have these observations (Caution!! Glass-is-half-full perspective ahead!!!):

“This is really a good story,” ALPA President Lee Moak said Tuesday during a visit to Bloomberg Businessweek in New York, part of a quick tour to assure Wall Street analysts that ALPA’s contract demands won’t prove onerous to airlines. "I almost can’t stand it, it’s so good."

The subject of the article is soaring airline profits. Moak says that he's so happy about profits these days that he "almost can't stand it." Given those profits' potential effects on our negotiating leverage, I find it hard to disagree.

Thanks to the profits, pilots now see themselves as collaborators with management—they increasingly lobby alongside airline executives in Washington. That, says Moak, deepens the working relationships. “All of a sudden, you find yourself on the same side of 95 percent of the issues,” he says.

I'm not sure I agree that we are on the same side of 95% of the issues, but we've certainly been lobbying Washington on some of the same subjects recently. To the extent that this makes us look more valuable in the eyes of management, I have to think that it can only help us at the table.

Delta says it paid nearly $92 million last year in similar (performance-based) incentives. “The employees are now coupled to the airlines,” says Moak, a Delta captain who is stepping down at year’s end after four years as president.

Presumably referring to profit sharing and our monthly goals payouts. The better the Company does, the better we do.

Moak contends that ALPA pilots at the larger carriers enjoy what he calls “mature, good contracts” already. Radical overhauls aren’t in the cards, he says.

I assume, although I do not know, that he is referring to the overall construct of our contract. There are many aspects of our contract that probably don't need much tweaking, leaving our NC able to focus more on simply raising value, e.g., pay rates, vacation pay, retirement, per diem, etc.

Most of the contract talks are likely to center on basic compensation—hourly pay rates and how much carriers pay into pilots’ retirement plans. “There will be a business discussion of pay as it relates to revenue,” Moak says. “You can argue about $2 or $2.05, and that matters to the crew member,” but “you’re working on the margins” on the new contracts, he says.

No idea what the "$2 or $2.05" refers to. An earlier poster suggested that it may be our pilot CASM, which was 1.36 cents in 2013. (If that's the case, why the dollar sign in front of the number?)

With a 4% increase in 2014 (pay + 401(k)) and another 3% in 2015, that will take us to 1.46 cents. Taking that up to 2.05 cents would mean an increase of some 40% which, according to Jerry's calculation, would cost around $800M.

Given a projected profit this year of $4B, I would agree that this could be characterized as "working on the margins."

Again, this is my ever-optimistic possible interpretation of what I read in the article. YMMV...