it for the reasons i said in my post. to finally drop the hammer and say you are in a cooling off period is no light matter. it will have an effect on stocks, passengers willingness to purchase tickets, and a handfull of other things that will eventually come when they give the go. its like when mesaba went on strike several years back. nwa and mesaba just started cancelling all their flights ahead of time to avoid it. the pilots still showed up to work but there were no flights for them to do because of all the pre-cancellations. just the threat of the strike caused that side of the red tail to come to a stop.