As long as we're better than regionals, the seats will get filled and the planes will still fly. A three or five year captain paired with someone coming to us with about a year in some RJ will be able to get the job done well enough, long enough to make the company run. Moreover the labor costs and benefits for having junior crews, most of whom aren't even fully vested in our benefits runs in the company's favor. This is why the efforts to drive people away from here have bothered me for years; it doesn't work. Those efforts also treated the pilots we were supposed to represent as commodities rather than customers.

Hindsight is 20/20 they say. Usually that's associated with calling someone a Monday-Morning Quarterback. The thing is hindsight also sees years of being told "Don't challenge our methods! We know what we're doing!". So now, as leaders attempt to shirk responsibility they're grasping for narratives. We're seeing "The pilots didn't sacrifice enough or stand with us!", but that ignores our leaders giving themselves raises or even joining management in the middle of investigations and negotiations. We're seeing "The company refused to negotiate". That ignores the delays we created after arbitration became unavoidable. Also our best strategist who claimed so much money couldn't come up with something to deal with "No."?

I'm sure I sound angry, but I'm really not. I'm saying credibility has long been a problem at 2750. Now's the time to admit leadership screwed it up and take stock of the real errors made. Should more have been delegated? Were too many decisions made by a single man without any check whatsoever? Were we too focused on internal power plays? Failure is common among great leadership teams, but those great leaders analyze and learn from those failures. That requires an honest admission of failure. That requires honesty. Dodging responsibility is for children. Children don't lead men and women.

Publicly admit fault now. Conduct an internal analysis. Publish findings. Be the men you pretend to be.