Not blaming anyone...saying the FAA quit cooperating and taking input and thus many of the things we thought were going to be in 117 (which came about after Colgan mishap) when faced with lawsuits after the carveout. I was one of the grass roots lobbyist pushing for one level of safety, and later was Chairman of the President's Committee for Cargo. We wanted to bring in "one level of safety". We also wanted to be involved in crafting the specifics, not just have them thrust upon us by the FAA.

You are trying to stick words into my mouth when all I am trying to do is explain some of the concerns that even our own members have expressed. FWIW...I walked the halls of both houses of Congress on and off for two years pushing for one level of safety, and even brought one of my daughters up to assist and see how the process works. I pushed hard in July 2013 to be ready to leverage the next mishap that was fatigue related into a strong PR campaign to readress 117 cargo shortfalls. Unfortunately a month later we had that mishap, the A300 crash in Birmingham. I'm not the enemy here--I am in agreement that the carveout needs to go away. However, before you simply try to "plug and play" the current legislation having a smart, measured approach to minimizing risk and enhancing safety by working with science based experts makes sense. What I am trying to say is the FAA quit listening, and what we "thought" we might get before the cutout and what we might get now could be drastically different. We need to get some smart consensus before we give ourselves a worse problem than we have under 121 rules with a solid CBA.

I do agree, however, that the ability to exclude and cut out cargo airlines is a horrible precedent. I'm long since out of the fight, but I am sure that there are pilots right now fighting to fix that issue.