Originally Posted by
sailingfun
If you can get a copy of the contract from 07 compare it to the current contract. You will be blown away by the overall improvements in pay and QAL. (Que the but we were in bankruptcy crowd) That happened in 10 years. I also never said I wanted or want small gains. I have consistently stated I wanted a 1 billion dollar a year contract. That would probably have been the most expensive contract in US airline history. I also stated that now even 3 years overdue will be lucky to get near that number. We could have been at or very near that number in 2019 I believe. The 3 billion opener shut down negotiations virtually from the start. It also painted the MEC into a corner. Even had the company said here is 1 billion, you decide where you want it the MEC could not bring something so far off their opener to the pilots. The company was also very aware of that.
Sailing,
Short duration contracts with steady gains would also require management to play along, and there was no indication that management was interested in anything but stalling in 2019. Also, there is a risk in opening negotiations while being overly concerned with appearing “reasonable”: As we saw in 2015, ALPA bent over backwards to be reasonable in negotiations, and the company completely exploited the situation. ALPA started with a “reasonable” ask and was completely demolished in the negotiation, while the company shot for the moon and obtained a TA overwhelmingly in management’s favor. We certainly don’t want to repeat that episode.