During the joint LEC meeting on Tues Dave Webb talked about the enhancement to the LOA offered by the company. The MEC's position was that it wasn't a "substantial" enhancement and thus they were planning on letting it stand. I personally asked him in front of the entire room what the difference was between FedEx sweetening this deal and Pinnacle offering their pilots bonus money (outside of their CBA) for recruiting new pilots. Since ALPA was suing Pinnacle over that issue how could we sit back now.

He said that the MEC did not think it was a "substantial" enhancement and we weren't in negotiations. I asked if this offer (the 10K "loan") was more than the bonus money Pinnacle pilots were getting and he said it probably was. I don't understand then how this is not a "substantial" enhancement to the LOA.

After the joint meeting we broke up into blocks. I made a motion that my LEC reps request the MEC to reject the 10K "loan" as being outside the scope of the LOA. Discussion ensued, 30 minutes later the motion failed 11-1.

I don't know what else you can do. The LEC and MEC are definitely engaged on this issue, I'm not sure if they know how they are going to proceed yet. But trying to get an issue up to the MEC is next to impossible.

In fairness, I could have gone in to the MEC meeting the next day and addressed the MEC as an at-large member (ha ha) and expressed my concerns, but I feel I had already done that with my direct question to Dave in the joint meeting.

FJ