My takeaway, inferring from listening to years of pilots and SWAPA officials discuss the issue, as to why we, the pilot group, have always fallen for the idea that we are limited to demanding nothing more than NB rates is that we fundamentally misunderstand the RLA's reasonability clause.

To me, at the core, it seems that most pilots hear the term "reasonable" and interpret it through the lens of their own layman's understanding of the word, as opposed to understanding it as it has been interpreted by decades of RLA case law. Finding, and then reading, the RLA case law on the issue of reasonability (and the concept of "good faith bargaining" which springs from it), so that a truer understanding of reasonability under the RLA can be developed, takes time.

Very few people, including apparently very few people within or contracted by SWAPA, are willing to put in that time. The price paid has been needlessly tethering ourselves to NB rates for the past five decades.