I think that's an important point. We're talking about their travel date, or "boarding date." Really no good reason to keep punishing these people. I don't even know what the CAL policy was or what it stated that resulted in their travel date being negatively affected.

I do recall several local council meetings whereby members in good standing were advocating for this and the union simply ignored them. No reasons, or rationale was ever given as to why ALPA (CAL MEC) would not simply try and do something positive for these folks who were so negatively affected.

Remember, the Furlough of the 147 pilots at CAL was done soley to rub the unions nose in it for saying NO to the abrogation of the scope clause. We had record junior-manning. We actually needed to hire pilots, and not furlough them. The company offered a No-Furlough clause if we had adopted a 2 percent pay raise in exchange for enhanced RJ flying and unlimited Joint Venture Flying.

These pilots were pawns, put in the middle of the CAL MEC and Larry Kellner's expansion of the network - without organically growing the airline plan. Combine that with the implementation of PBS, which resulted in the pseudo-layoff of over 400 pilots (pilots not replaced upon retirement due to PBS efficiencies), and the result is simply the name "continental airlines."

Boarding dates should be restored. The union should see the logic in this and insist upon a sense of fair-play. Equitable rules for things like this are just commonsense.