Sorry to pick on you, Alan... I know a couple of others have made the same point but I just happened to read yours last so you get to be the lucky one.

I don't think anyone has made the argument that DALPA is motivated to achieve less than THEY THINK is possible. The difference of opinion is in terms of what is possible or not.

Clearly, the prevailing opinion within DALPA over the past 10 years has been that bankruptcy was a reset and that our profession (and by extension, our careers) are simply less valuable in the marketplace today than they were for decades prior to bankruptcy and there's nothing we can do to change that. Based on this assumption (which I think is completely wrong), they have not set an objective to restore the value of our profession but rather only to try and get incremental, "reasonable" gains "at every opportunity" to the new baseline that was established via bankruptcy. The Rich Harwood's of the world have prevailed with a bean counter mentality that clearly favors management's overemphasis on cost control and completely dismisses the long established value of our profession.

I also think that is a big source of the apathy and disunity we are experiencing. I have no doubt it's a big part of the reason why DPA was able to get thousands of pilots to send in a card.

And that is the crux of the problem I have with DALPA. No objective to restore our profession and our careers. Their only apparent objective is to get some vague level of "improvements," which could be satisfied by ANY improvement no matter how small. That, my friend, is a weak and ineffective objective.