"Yes, lets dump this money on retaining new people while our new hire classes are always full and we have a massive abundance of F.O.'s, and screw the rest of the pilot group."

If you truly believe that Mesa is "filling classes" and that they will continue to be able to fill classes after a severely sub-par TA is voted in, you are woefully uninformed. The end of the pilot recruit line has been reached. The "upgrade carrot" is gone since other airlines are already hiring Direct Entry Captains. Mesa is scraping the bottom of the barrel to find pilots as are all other regional airlines. I'm talking cold calls, no interview, "can you be in class next week", type recruiting. And the percentage of pilots making it through training is going down. Take the time to educate yourself on this.

If you have been flying for a while, I see how you could not be aware of the state of the industry. The number one challenge is finding and retaining QUALIFIED FO's willing to work for poverty level salaries. People just won't do it anymore. Vote in a sub-par contract, you will no longer be able to recruit, and Mesa will start parking airplanes. Just like Republic is already doing. Parked airplanes bring in no revenue while payments still have to be. It is a very bad financial equation. Mesa has to keep up with other regionals salaries and benefits, or start parking airplanes.

I do not understand how anyone can not see the writing on the wall. Voting in this TA will be the death of Mesa.

If there is "no money" to pay competitive salaries, then it's time for management to go back to their major partners and inform them "the environment has changed". It is no longer possible to recruit pilots at poverty level wages. So if the majors don't want to take the flying back and want to try to keep the regional model going for a little while longer, they will have to provide a bigger slice of the revenue pie to their partners to pay the pilots. We all know they are making billions.

Vote in this TA and watch how quickly Mesa falls apart.