My long view of our profession is optimistic. In the next few years there will be some more airline failures and at least one or two legacy airline will go on strike. Contracts will eventually improve for all of us but there will always be furloughs. It may take ten years or so to make this a worthwhile profession but if enough of us demand it we will succeed.

Unfortunately, there will be a lot of pain still to come and some of us are getting too old and too tired to hang in there until things get better.