In order to be a victim, you had to be victimized. I don't view it that way.

Look at what happened to Pan Am, TWA, and the various alphabet soup airlines from the 80's onward. Those pilots thought they all had dream jobs and it's just the luck of the draw.

You go to the prom with the one who asked you to the dance. It may work out or it may not work out, but at least you had a good time. 100 percent of my current beef with this operation lies with management. The operation is inefficient, top-heavy, and labor intensive (takes too many man hours to do the job) in many areas not related to flight ops. Makes us non-competitive. In turn, the company puts the screws to the pilots to be more efficient, so the airline can be more competitive.

Here's the deal. We're all here now. Our current problem is a disorganized rabble known as UAL senior management.

Allot of really amazing people got their lives turned upside down in the various bankruptcies and mergers in this industry, and I don't think we're done yet. Right now, we may think we won the lottery working here, but snap your fingers and it could all be gone tomorrow.

The real issue to get over from a LCAL perspective (for me personally) is the raw emotion of the journey. We actually had rampers paying money to give to Gordon Bethune to buy him a Harley Davidson Motorcycle. Any company that would allow their minimum wage employees to do this is "beyond" it all in my opinion. But, that's the kind of loyalty and dedication that the brainwashing resulted in. In the 90's it was allot of fun to be a part of the big turn-around at CAL. But everything we invested in is really gone now. It may sort of be like getting divorced. Don't have any experience with that, but that's really how I think it is. Lots of years, lots invested. But, it's all gone now.

From a union perspective: It was IACP, but then it was ALPA. Problem was, it was the same damn people. I don't understand why ALPA forgave the scabs, but when the scabs are running the MEC, and Fred Abbot is running the airline via the Pfrends of Pfred program it's a strange dynamic. Sort of like letting the lunitics run the insane asylum.