Like I said, posting on APC is only one way I have been active in attempting to educate and make a difference in the pilot group. I’d also say that very few people, including very few within SWAPA, were talking about many of the RLA-associated topics that we hear much more about these days before I began hammering them both here on APC and elsewhere - for years now. I don’t think that’s a coincidence.

So, I’m pretty certain I’ve made a difference that has had a significant impact on the RLA topic within our pilot group. When it comes to negotiating a contract, the DNA of a pilot group’s life, there are few topics more important than the RLA.

To your point about being confident “we are going to achieve a great contract,” most of the pilot group was confident that we were going to get a great contract last time too after “SWAPA 2.0” stepped in. Most everyone here believed our current contract was a great contract, though most people didn’t like 100% of it, when they voted to ratify it.

One important reason much of the pilot group believed it was a great contract was because our then-SWAPA president led them to believe it was. So enamored was so much of the pilot group by his public charisma, word of his aw-shucks-all-but-endorsement of it was all it took to push many within the pilot group over the edge into a yes vote.

It wasn’t until our pilot group had to live under our “great contract” for a while that buyer’s remorse began to grip more and more of us. Now you’ll find very few people who find the prospect palatable of continuing to live indefinitely under the chaos that is allowed under our current “great” contract - the one our last SWAPA president enthusiastically let it be known he voted yes for. And with him, a large bloc of the pilot group followed suit.

So, you can blow off the skepticism of people like myself who have not just complained about the situation but actually done something about it. It’s so trite to say, “Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it,” but I’m trying to point out that just because SWAPA is better than it was before and it seems like we have a lot of leverage, it doesn’t mean that we’re not going to drop the ball like we’ve done repeatedly in the past.

People, not just pilots, have a tendency to think “this time is different.” They buy into the next bubble because “this time is different.” They follow a new guru because the new guru “is different.” Someone smart said, “There is nothing new except that which is forgotten.”

If we’re not aware of and very consciously attempting to avoid the strong historical proclivity of this pilot group to be led by SWAPA into voting yes on substandard and sorely lacking deals, we are more than likely going to repeat that history again.

You can take all of that as someone calling you a “mindless sheep,” or “telling the masses how stupid they are,” but the better lesson, IMO, is to resolve to not make the same old mistake one more time.

And, BTW, point of order, for argument’s sake, if I am, in fact “telling the masses how stupid they are” here on APC, and if me posting on APC only has the potential to change “half a percent of the votes around this place,” how will that backfire “spectacularly”? I think you mean something more like it might “kinda backfire,” or “backfire benignly” or something more akin to what might happen if a whole half a percent of people vote against whatever it is I’m advocating because they feel, as you do, like I’m calling them “mindless sheep.”