It was pretty heated. Two cop cars parked outside, cops in lobby of hotel. Looked like they were looking for anyone bringing in signs etc. Other than that it started pretty calm. Mike interrupted opening speech to tell someone to watch their language, their are ladies and children present, and if they want to mess with him they can bring it on anytime, anywhere - "I'm from Chicago!" Other than that is was pretty quiet for him and the negotiator's first and largest presentation on pay. That alone lasted a good 25 minutes and as usual, the charts blithely ignored the presence of inflation. Rest of negotiator's presentations got a few groans and shouted comments until they got up to sick leave, when Morgado said "Ok, we'll just breeze right through sick leave" - meaning before taking a break, I think - and there was a lot of laughter, groaning, some heckling, so they just took the 10 minute break right there. Crowd got increasingly restless during sick leave portion, and then when Mike D made his closing remarks he made the mistake of asking the rhetorical questions? "Was this agreement made too quickly? Was it concessionary?" but each time he said no the crowd drowned him out with yesses. It went downhill quickly from there and Mike ended up yelling for about 4 minutes straight. Extremely defensive. Q&A time was actually less chaotic, but lots of applause for many of the speakers critical of the TA. Bill Rourke (sp?), former rep, gave the first speech & was quite good. Another guy whose name I didn't catch gave a very emotional speech about all the things lost over the last 10 years and all the things we didn't ask for in our surveys. Another relayed a hilarious (and likely exaggerated) conversation he had with Ed Bastian when Ed was on the jumpseat and concluded his speech with "Thank you for your work, gentlemen...now go and do it over!" to much laughter, cheers, & applause. Female FO raked em over the coals for saying only 2% of FOs would be affected. They repeated it several times and she kept going after for them for it, and finally Mike got tired of it and said "Well, you have your vote."
I had to leave 3 hours into the meeting, there were still speakers lined up but energy seemed to be flagging. Overall, it was far more incendiary than I expected Peachtree City to be...but keep in mind there were 400 people there, only about 10% of ATL pilots, they weren't all hostile, and don't necessarily represent an accurate cross-section so I'm not going to read too much into the reception. That said...if PTC was rough...can't wait for NYC, DTW, and MSP!
