MG doesn't need a pandemic to maintain 20% margins. With the new 737s coming on line, he will just stop acquiring used 320s accelerate retirements of old aircraft and we will be single 737 fleet. MG is not afraid at all of contraction. He will gladly shrink the airline if it means he maintains his high margins. If we had rational, traditional management like any other airline then yes we would have all the leverage because no CEO could ever tell the board that shrinking the airline is the wise move...but we don't have a traditional CEO or a traditional board. MG has the board in his pocket, its whatever he wants to do and anybody that has worked here for more than a couple years should know that MG will absolutely cut off his nose to spite his face if it means doing it his way.

So SHOULD we have all the leverage? Of course. The market is proving that we have all the leverage but MG is not beholden to the market like other CEOs. I fear we will see massive down grades, displacements (not necessarily a bad thing imo) and line holders sitting reserve for the first time in a decade.

The goal should be the highest NB rates out there, with a guarantee that we never get leap frogged to the bottom half of the industry which is the rumor I heard. Massive increase to retirement. Work rules are gonna get trampled by scheduling no matter what we agree to so I hope we don't waste time and negotiating equity thinking that we are gonna get some magic set of rules that won't be broken by management. Then when they get broken, an arbitrator sides with management which has been happening a lot lately (have we won an arbitration in the last couple years? was the last win PBS in mid-2020?).

No arbitrator can ignore rates. Management cannot ignore rates. Pay up. In fact management is gonna have to pay us more because we know by now that any work rules we get are useless. I just convinced myself that we should always be the highest paid NB in the industry to compensate for the fact that all of our work rules are meaningless.