How was the union supposed to make it's members do anything, particularly when it involved staying out of harms way?
In the end, I think that the crewmembers were satisfied with changing the layover to IST from tlv, but having one of its crew members marched to the hotel ballroom at the end of an ak47 with the other guests by terrorists while the other hid under his bed was kind of the last straw.
We didn't just roll over and I like the deal that the IPA made out of a bad situation. In exchange for allowing subcontracting on that specific route, we got a rule that said the managers could not pick up open time for proficiency flying, they could only displace. We probably saved more block hours for the group with that than we lost by giving up that route.
Now that we are getting the route back, I'm surprised that we got to keep the displacement language. People bidding international should know what the extra risks that they are accepting, but I don't see the precedent that was set the same way you do.