How big is too big to fail for an organization? No, the pilots and planes won’t dematerialize, the aircraft and personnel have innate value, and they’ll certainly find a home somewhere, but that doesn’t mean that if management cannot (or refuses to) deal with current conditions in the industry the organization itself is still somehow bulletproof. Nor does the fact that the NMB has been reluctant to release pilots to strike in the past mean they won’t do it now.

Sometimes someone needs to be made an example of, as the Frogs say, “Pour encourager les autres.”