Mako, et al: I honestly and completely understand why you want to vote no categorically and loudly to send a message to the company. You guys were screwed bigger than almost any group of employees in the last few decades. That said, please understand that many of us care and/or are affected by United’s ability to recover from this. It matters a lot to some of us whether it’s an 8000 pilot airline with great margins, or a 13,000 pilot airline with moderate margins.

Your fears of the company having better lawyers than the union are obviously founded, but I think the union email expresses best what many of us feel. The contract is either in place or it’s not. We are either in bankruptcy, or we are not. The company cannot simply ignore random provisions in our UPA. I personally am willing to gamble that Scott Kirby wants to run one of the largest airlines in the world. He is not a Smisek, Bastian, Tilton or whomever.

I personally think the real message of the union email this morning was: if you don’t want to give up 10 to 20% of your guarantee to help a furloughee, so be it. That is totally your prerogative and most of the pilots who were in that position have an understandable desire to make as much money as I can before they retire. I’m OK taking less days of work each month to keep people on property. I think the important thing is to vote your conscience not based on a fear of things that have a very small likelihood of coming to pass, but On things that are certainly going to happen.

to me the most salient point of all of this, is that the company is taking a gamble as well. This is not a one-sided concession or us “helping” them out. The fact that they have offered some thing that is (short term) cash negative and manpower positive is indicative that they do not want to cede market share. If someone else does not have the same appetite for the risk, I totally get it and they should vote NO. I personally Will be more focused on the contractual provisions we gain and the mechanisms for achieving more gains through specific metrics, not my take-home pay for the next year. Those are my personal criteria and I completely respect that other people have very different values and objectives about this airline/their career