Not to be too much a "Debby Downer," but JA is obviously not going away in the new contract based on yesterday's NC update, which mentioned "SWAPA’s asks" for "recovery days for JAed Pilots." The clear inference from that statement is that SWAPA isn't even demanding that JA be eliminated.

And to inject some realism about how close we might be to a release: aside from the fact that we are more than a year away from surpassing the average numbers of days in mediation for cases handled recently by the NMB (which the courts have established is an important metric), SWAPA also said in their email that we are still AIP'ing sections. If we are AIP'ing sections, that is progress. Progress is the opposite of an impasse. Like SWAPA explained in the same email, the mediator measures progress with AIP's. IOW, on more than one front, we are nowhere near an impasse from all indications.

Remember, the courts have established that "movement toward the position of the other side is not a requirement of good faith bargaining." Also, "[m]ere insistence on demands that seem extremely harsh to the other side and that a neutral party may consider `hard' is not a violation of bargaining duties." Another court threw out the idea "that proposals 'must be within a debatable range and not so extreme as necessarily to preclude favorable consideration' by the other party." We don't have to be constantly moving toward the company's side and we don't have to constrain our demands to what the company (or anyone else) considers fair or industry standard (if that's what is going on).

If any of the above concerns you, let your reps and execs know that you're not on board with JA, and with continuing to AIP sections of the contract that may not be absolutely industry-leading (JA of any sort is NOT industry-leading) when the RLA doesn't require us to treat the company with kid gloves, esp in this pilot hiring market (the SCOTUS has said, "labor laws allow economic strength ultimately to control the establishment of contract terms, regardless of which side may have better reasons for its position.")