According to SWAPA, the choke point in terms of being able to field pilots is training capacity. The company has said the same thing. It’s not a dearth of pilots willing to work at SWA under our current contract nor an excess of pilot turnover.

Assuming SWAPA and SWA are correct, SWA would be better served, absent the credible threat of a strike from our pilot group, lavishing money upon the training center and training-related items if they want to fly at full capacity sooner.

The reason, as you have read on the Delta forum, the credible threat of a strike is rarely a thing with pilots is the mindset of pilots with respect to the RLA process. To begin with, nearly everything pilots seem to believe about the RLA is rooted in myth rather than reality. Poll how many pilots believe the President can stop us from striking. Get a pulse on how many pilots believe the mediator can hold us in mediation indefinitely (“forever”). Can more than half of our pilots explain to you the difference between arbitration and mediation? Find out how many of our guys think the President will just shut us down “like Clinton did to American in the 90’s.” Determine what percent of our pilot group believe what happened to Alaska back in the mid-2000’s with their arbitration award could also happen to us.

Second, because the RLA process is by design, long and drawn-out, pilots almost always lose patience due to negotiating fatigue and over fears of the lost time value of money even though, historically, TA2’s have often delivered significantly better value than TA1’s. And that’s if the pilot group allows a first TA to be voted on vice simply pressing their RLA advantage all the way from the beginning.

In late 1996, American pilots voted down their second TA, which delivered more than twice as much of a pay increase as their first TA did. In 2015, we voted down our first TA that makes the lagging turd we’re currently working under look like a beautiful thing. Same thing with Delta’s most recent contract. It’s the result of voting down their first TA. How much do you wanna bet United’s TA2 will be better than their TA1? IOW, patience has a history of paying off when it comes to airline contracts but pilots can’t seem to get beyond their own shortsightedness.

By far the main thing standing in the way of pilots being able to execute an effective RLA strategy is pilots. It’s not the RLA itself. It’s not the NMB. It’s not the company. It’s pilots.

To your point in your previous post, though, SWAPA sucks at communications and education. It’s as if they’re run by boomers who think Facebook is still the latest and greatest and that podcasts are the shizz. If I could get SWAPA to do one thing, it’d be to outsource their communications department (overseen strategically, of course, by pilots) to a cutting edge digital marketing firm with proven very recent results. I’m thinking perhaps a group like The Lincoln Project or some other very clever and cutting edge group that has made a serious impact - because SWAPA is like Dana Carvey’s grumpy old man when it comes to social media marketing and outreach. It’s almost comic how bad they are at it and how thoroughly Luddite they are. They are hopelessly done in by themselves and outmatched by who they’re up against: the company and firms like FordHarrison.