Yeah, they giveth and they taketh away. That's just it, a lot of guys are saying "Well, look at how much this trip would pay with the 5:15 calendar day!" without considering that the pairing optimizer will not just run the same trip and pay us more. It puts a penalty on soft time and will try to build the most efficient trips. You won't have a CLT-LAX-CLT red eye now paying 15:45, those legs will be incorporated into other trips. I think the 5:15 calendar day would be better, but not millions of dollars better.

A couple of other things to think about. The MOU had a 1:-3.25 trip rig for trips with a greater than 24 hour overnight. Not great, but would have added over 5% to my line this month. The APA gave it away! What did that tell the company?

And finally, I got an answer to my question of why the 10 reps voted against sending the last offer to the company, from one of the 10. He said that the APA and company were close to closing out the contract and he felt we could have gotten, at a minimum, the 5:15 calendar day had we not asked for too much. Hmmm. They were about to give it to us last week before the ask, but after they wouldn't with the BOD offering to pass it without a vote, and no other asks, on the 3rd. Doesn't add up, so that leads me to believe the company is not scared of arbitration.

The kicker to al