MD10PLT

You ask who the Pied Piper is; it's ALPA both national and local. Quite frankly ALPA is leading us off a cliff. We are heading into contract negotiations with the most fractured pilot group probably in the history of airline unions.

How did we get here? By basically pitting the junior against the senior crew members. Most will say it was the company who did this, but I disagree.

Lets first look at our last contract for all the hidden money, it's all located in the MD-11 international flying. How about Trip Rig, increasing it was a good thing, to bad very few of the narrow body aircraft fly Trip Rig. The list goes on and we've all seen the discussions. Bottom line, the last contract benefited one group.

Now I'll through in age 65. Need I say more, we know who that benefited. Then the excess out of the 727 SO. Anyone who believes ALPA didn't have a part in all this in smoking crack.

Then there is the current excess. ALPA made all these under the table deals as to how this would work. Too bad we can't get the details of all the deals, but we do know there are lots of guys entitled to passover pay who aren't getting it due to some special deal.

Now we have a situation where all anyone is asking, is for the company to follow the contract (which they clearly aren't) and when someone points this out we get the "you should feel lucky to be getting a paycheck" comment. This statement is about as divisive as any I can think of. It basically says "shut up and color we know what's best for you". Well based on what I laid out at the beginning of this post, I'm not convinced ALPA is working in our collective best interest.

So how do we get the unity back. Lets see some leadership from the TOP. And by top I mean the top of the seniority list. There are lots of ways this could occur, I'll just throw out one example; protect min days off. I'm sure there are lots of other good examples.

Until we start seeing some leadership from above, someone please explain to me what the benifit in following these guys is.