Originally Posted by
gettinbumped
It's not, and never has been, about "rushing in and helping management". It's about maximizing negotiating capital to gain improvements for the pilot group by taking advantage of leverage when it exists. If what you say is true (and I'm not questioning whether it is or not since I'm not a widebody guy), then we should be thankful that management ego and stupidity is costing them millions of dollars of add pay because they refuse to offer 5 hours to the crew to extend. What a win for the pilots. With a new management team at the helm it's entirely possible they will audit this practice and realize that they have stupidly been costing themselves a LOT of money, fix the practice, and eliminate the leverage. Then you end up with basically the same situation as you have with the AIP, but with $0 paid by the company in exchange.
I am cautiously optimistic you are correct. I know for a fact that Munoz was told in no uncertain terms exactly how Smisek's management style, "F the pilots-they will not EVER have the upper hand", was severely handcuffing the operation of the highest profile flights: HKG, BOM, and DEL. We'll see how it all shakes out, F Smisek and the horse he rode in on.