Originally Posted by Lewbronski

Ummm, I think it'd be difficult to argue that many people have done more to educate the pilot group both in ways you've seen here on APC and in ways you probably have no idea about. It's not a "cool guy 16 percent club" to me. I tried like hell last time to make the 16% into at least 51%. But people here were then, and judging by most of the people I fly with nowadays, still largely checked out.

We here on the various forums are a tiny minority of relatively engaged people. Last cycle, we had "SWAPA 2.0" and the pilot group's massive participation at the pickets. Everything was supposed to be different. And then we voted in TA-2 with high-fives all around. Some guys were hugging each other because they thought SWAPA had broken new ground by getting a B-Fund, which crappy old bottom-feeder AirTran had already had for at least a decade before our pilot group was crying tears of joy over getting one. TA-2 is the very piece of garbage people are complaining about right now as enabling the company to bend us over, day after day.

Now we have current SWAPA and our current pilot group. Everything is supposed to be different all over again. We'll see.

But we've already started off poorly by inexplicably delaying the filing for mediation beyond anything the pandemic could account for. There was very little awareness among the pilot group as to why filing for mediation earlier is important and very little pressure from the pilot group on SWAPA to expedite the filing for mediation. As a consequence, we are at least a year out right now from the point in time at which the NMB even begins to feel pressure based on time in mediation to release us.

Somebody said SWAPA "top-roped" the company with the 99% SAV. No. While good and better than I expected, the SAV at this point in negotiations and mediation does not create a lot of pressure on the company. The SAV becomes more and more important as we approach the point in time at which a release becomes realistic (ie, not now). What will be "top-roping" the company is waiting likely at least another year to get to a release without capitulating for less than we can achieve before then due to negotiating fatigue, "can't get everything in one go," and time value of money arguments.

You guys can say this kind of talk is unproductive. But the emphasis around here among the truly "cool kids" is to close our eyes and say things like "SWAPA speaks for me" right up until about 18 months after a ratified contract when people realize SWAPA convinced them to vote for another lagging turd. That hasn't proven to be very productive either around here. By then, it's way too late to point out how this pilot group has always seemed to need someone, whether that's Herb or JW or CM, to tell them how to think and that those people have not always been right.