I hope you guys don't have to f-lough, and I hope that we can get a frigging contract like yours over here at 9E so we can hopefully keep the bar where you guys have it set so DAL loses any incentive to whipsaw us on the 200s...

On the other hand...all the comments on here about paying the bills and food stamps and stuff--I checked, and even on first year pay at many regionals, it goes over the Fed program requirements for stamps...jesus.

As a side note, if you have lots of student loans, and you do get laid-off, there are such things as economic hardship deferments (for both fed and many private lenders), consolidation (Chase and Wells Fargo do private student loan consolidations on 25 (Wells) and 30 (Chase) year terms). There is always also grad school so you can get an in-school deferment. I've looked into all of these in case 9E ever had to drop the F-bomb (they're surverying captains over here about VOLAs as a possible cost-mitigation for '09, though it might be scare tactics).

Sounds like there are def some politics going on with your ALPA and PBS...though it would seem logical to most observers that PBS reduces staffing needs, PBS actually works better in a slightly overstaffed condition...if they F-d the bottom guys who are outside of the f-lough clause, but kept the remaining 100-170 who were f-lough protected (this would seem to be a slightly overstaffed condition from what guys are saying on here)...that would probably result in LESS costs than continuing with paper bidding and f-loughing 300 or so. There is a sweet spot where PBS generates the best solutions from a cost perspective, and it's usually when you're very slightly overstaffed...

Can't make any predictions b/c I don't work there and have no idea what your staffing/lines look like, but it might actually be the company pushing for PBS + Floughing the guys outside of the clause...they might have run a sample solution with whatever software package they're using and figured that out...