Originally Posted by Lewbronski

IMO, it's really hard to say without being in the negotiating room with the NC if it was premature or not. Attempting to read the tea leaves, given the status updates we've received over the last several months and our continued willingness to "help pilots by helping the company" with agreements like the LRF deal we just inked, my impression is that we are nowhere near an impasse. However, that may not, in reality, be the case if the NC and SWAPA leadership have genuine reason to believe we are at a true impasse. The request for release from mediation indicates that an impasse may truly exist.

If the NMB denies the request for a proffer of arbitration, it may embolden the company to slow things down. However, it seems like they're awfully emboldened already, anyway. How much worse off would we be if the company slowed things down even more? Any more slowing and they could start to skate onto legal thin ice in terms of bad faith bargaining.

But, as I've stated before, neither the NMB nor the company can make mediation go on forever. The company can only slow things down for so long. The NMB can only slow things down for so long. As long as we are playing the RLA game as it needs to be played, and we're all staying the legal course, eventually the company will have to move toward our position or face a release (and all that a release entails).

As far as when is the earliest another request can be made goes, that's entirely up to SWAPA. The RLA doesn't specify any requirement that a request for release be made at all, though it seems like it has become the custom. This is what the text of the RLA says about the process from after mediation is requested through the conclusion of mediation: