Originally Posted by gloopy

I'm not against surveying. We just have to be careful how we do it, and even more careful as to how we interpret it. You list a lot of hypothetical examples of something very minor being weighed less than something larger, etc. Of course. And I've never been against certain "addressing of their concerns". For example WRT sick, the footprint counting against first round GS eligibility is 100% fair and flat out common sense that, while sometimes "costing" one particular pilot a bonus-round trip, is, overall, more fair to all pilots and is the right thing to do.

And I agree that some things go to "tier two" or whatever. In fact, I think trying to rewrite War and Peace every time we open it isn't in our interests in most cases. UAL's recent extension is a great example of that. They were able to leapfrog everyone else by a nice amount, and all they "gave up" (from what I've seen and was told...admittedly I haven't read their entire contract but I doubt anyone here has either) was a small amount of flexibility for FMRS/long haul flying.

So maybe the next one can be about raises and work rule and scope improvements. Any "gives" should be specifically surveyed by the pilots rather than implied simply because we ranked everything. Even if you were able to rank your kids in the order that you loved them doesn't grant a mandate to harm one over the other. Yes that's not the perfect analogy either, but no analogy ever is, otherwise there'd be no need for analogies in the first place.

Going forward, scope should be sacrosanct. No gives in any section, period. Not at any price. The only discussions about scope should be improvements without givebacks in the section and the details of future JV's. That's it. Even if scope isn't "ranked" number one or even two in a survey that forces you to rank absolutely critical sections against one another.

We can't view the inevitable rankings as a mandate to plunder one section to buff another. If give backs are to be considered, we at least need to specifically include that in a survey for it to be valid as implied. Do you want to give up XYZ for a raise in section 3? If it was asked like that, there would be far less evidence supporting most give backs.