Originally Posted by Valar Morghulis

You do realize that reps are not on full time leave, right?

Last time I talked to my rep, he had just gotten in from a 12 hour day, and had more calls to make that night. I ran into him later, and he told me that ALPA work cost him 15-20 hours every month and no way would he do that again.

When I got hired, you often saw 4-6 people running for each rep position, and the contest was strong.

These days, you’re lucky if you have any choice, because only one person steps up.

That tells me it’s a much better deal to be out on the line. Of course, you’ve got the TA1 crowd complaining, but when they were running things, the contract blew in a lot of ways, so maybe flying the line wasn’t the best deal going at that point. A lot of those people stuck around in ALPA work for a long time.