All Pinnacle Brothers and Sisters;

Please take your time and vote wisely. Go to the road shows. Read the TA for yourself. Ask questions. For God's sake, do not listen to rumor or what someone "thinks" is in the TA. Find out for yourselves.

Please do not cave into management's empty and veiled threats that you will be closing up shop if you do not pass this TA. Chapter 1 Page 1 out of the Management Playbook says to instill fear amongst the employees until it passes. This is just a scare tactic! Their "last, best and final offer" is anything but. If you tell a lie long enough, eventually people begin to believe it. They can do better and you deserve better. Do not be overcome by the airline version of the Stockholm Syndrome; make no mistake, that is exactly what this is. If they hold you hostage long enough, eventually you may begin to sympathize with them.

At Comair in 2005 were told that if we took pay freezes and longevity freezes that we would be "in line" with other DCI carriers and would win growth. It didn't happen. Then later in 2005-2006 we were dragged into a sham bankruptcy along with Delta and were forced to sign a concessionary agreement under the threat of the 1113 process. We were told that if we did not take concessions that Comair would fold. However, if we did take the concessionary agreement that (and I am quoting our VP of Flight Ops) "Delta would grow the hell out of us" and (a quote from our Chief Pilot at the time) "this place will grow like wild fire". Well, we agreed on a concessionary contract, again, under the threat of having a Bankruptcy Court imposed contract forced on us using the 1113 process. Well, I can tell you that the bleeding continued and we did not see any growth. In fact, we still to this day are being gutted slowly with, unfortunately, no end in sight.

You know the saying. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Well that certainly applies here.

I guess what I am trying to say is do not settle for one cent less than you are worth. Anything less than that is unacceptable. Of course your management team will hem and haw and say that you will fold or that Delta will send your flying away or that it will put you at an uncompetitive disadvantage. But the fact is that agreeing to a sub par contract will not guarantee that those things won't happen anyway.

Just ask any Comair pilot.