Who gives a ****. I'm glad he's not an apathetic sheep, willing to roll over and take whatever management gives him. If he has to drink a few before bed to help him sleep at night, so be it! But I'm glad he can see through management's bull****.

That's BS post, I don't know G from Adam.

If you don't drink before bed then I question you as a human being.

Exactly, it's not like he's Ramsay Bolton. Ed is, not Gzyg/spot.

Is there any scenario where management reduces debt to a takeover threshold and also gains massively from that takeover? At some point our leaders could just say Fcck it and cash out, right? Or not?

At a time in the industry that no one has ever seen, I don't think that a takeover of one of the three behemoths in the US airline structure is possible (at least for the next five years). The standard of carrying $5B of debt in the years' past may be worth challenging from the investor standpoint. Maybe they are smart in dropping it to the $4B mark, but it still doesn't take away from our stance of being able to afford the first round draft picks. We were hired by a champion to defend the championship, and that's it! The good news on all of this is that, unlike the gov't, they can't destroy any files or drives to hide the money. It's there now and will still be there on record during the process of mediation. The money is there and/or was there without any credible denial. The ball's in our court. Hold the LINE!!!

I am curious on why you believe that the mediator will tie our compensation to the profitability of the company? That is certainly something they have not done before and as far as I can tell does not happen in any industry let alone airlines. The company will point out the PS program is our reward for profits. Long term I am not sure we even want to tie our direct compensation to profits.
We should focus on what we have given up and the direct cost savings the company is achieving as a result of those concessions over the last 12 years. In particular we should put together a analysis of what it would cost to run the airline absent those concessions. We would require around 20% more pilots to run the airline.

So if the company were to start hemorrhaging money they wouldn't come after us seeking to "reopen" the contract for concessions? And a mediator wouldn't agree?

Just tell them, "A contract is a contract."

Absent a real threat of a chapter 11 filing where the company can access the courts I am saying exactly that. The company hemoraged cash for 3 years while we not only took no cuts but got multiple pay raises from 01 to 04. Only a credible threat to file chapter 11 lead to LOA 46.