Congrats on closing the chapter on this book, guys and gals. You put up a great fight, and I'm glad to see that you got some good improvements to your contract. Also glad to see that the unity you all displayed payed the dividends that it did.... a good lesson to pilots everywhere.

Trying to look forward to our OWN negotiations, I've perused your contract details with interest. The one area where I'm most concerned is the "signing bonus". It appears that more and more, retro pay has now slipped by the wayside as an important issue. Companies are buying us off with a fairly insignificant sum and being let off the hook on the retro side. With retro gone, so is the incentive to negotiate swiftly. Dragging the process out three, four, five years just keeps looking better and better if they are going to only have to drop $3,000 per captain rather than the $30,000+ in retro pay they would owe. Hmmm.... I think I'll go call my reps.