Originally Posted by Funk

“Survival mode” for the company would actually mean something if they genuinely acted that way. You seem to want to spout “survival mode” as an all purpose Jedi mind trick to invalidate any argument you don’t like, but it doesn’t quite work that way when the company says and does things that are radically inconsistent with an organization clawing for survival. As it is, they act more like the “starving” panhandler at the edge of the Walmart parking lot, turning down work and offerings they don’t like. Anyone here been to Ranger School? One thing you learn from those bubbas is that you never turn down food because you don’t know if it will be the last, but after pocketing the savings of an April rebid, the company wasn’t hungry enough to offer SILs to save more money. And before you respond with the nonsense about unknowable take rates, consider what “survival mode” actually means, and that five months later, after dramatically cutting the daily cash burn and raising tons of liquidity, the company is in “survival mode” enough to use FM to avoid paying one month of furlough pay to the the most senior furloughed pilots, all while raising another $5.6 BILLION in new cash from the frequent flyer program.

The reality is that the company has painlessly raised sufficient cash to hunker down until they (and others) forecast a return in revenue. Don’t forget they feel choosy and confident enough to turn down additional government loans just like a panhandler turning down work because he really isn’t starving. In the meantime, they’ve engaged in a lot of dramatic theatre to try and reset their overall cost structures. MOAD (thoroughly impossible to execute as published and awarded), 2558, and 1941 are all actions aimed at putting pain on the pilot group to try and create negotiating leverage more than than actual savings. All the talk of exhausting all the possible voluntary measures is just that, talk. “Fighting for survival” would have meant a series of cobbled together cost savings LOAs from the beginning, SILS, long term PLOA, USERRA relief, to name a few, would all have been steps for a company in “survival mode.” Dictating a targeted ALV reduction and calling it voluntary doesn’t pass the “survival mode” smell test. And, while we’re at it, let’s just remember what the gap in say versus do means in terms of credibility, or profound lack thereof, for a company that has implied pilots weren’t helping shave costs, has attempted to negotiate in public, and claims that FM in one area compels them to use it in all areas of the contract.

This company may have the sign out saying “no furloughs for ALV reduction,” but it is hardly genuine or representative of a company fighting for “survival.”