I do not believe this is entirely correct. If we are talking about SLI, SWA(the company) will propose nothing. SWAPA's M&A (merger and acquisition) committee will make the proposals. Any TA made with our M&A will be conditional upon sending it to the SWAPA BOD (Board of Directors) who will vote on whether to send such TA to the entire membership for a vote.

It is my understanding that AirTran's ALPA MEC will make all proposals and any acceptance or refusal will be entirely up to them and that the AirTran pilots will never actually vote on any agreement. Perhaps an AirTran pilot could confirm or deny this.

There is also a step in between called mediation before arbitration. It has just been agreed that if anything goes to arbitration that it will be a three person panel. It is my hope that we can come up with something mutually acceptable before it gets that far. If it does go to arbitration then it is what it is. We implement the ruling and press on as one big family (happily I hope).

Hmm..in the dictionary under "redundant" it says "see redundant."

:D

Do you guys think this may also take awhile for the SLI, or are both parties hoping this goes quickly?!

Greetings again. It's my understanding (and I keep fairly informed and in touch with what's going on), that if you guys get to vote on an SLI agreement then we will too. Which kinda makes binding arbitration an absolute certainty. I'm under the belief that the vast majority of issues were going to go to arbitration anyway, but now you throw in BOTH pilot groups having to approve it by vote and well, I don't think there's any way that it's going to get done w/o the three panel arbitration.

A very likely scenario is that it will never even get sent out to the pilot groups to vote on because our MCs cannot come to an agreement. We'll see. In the end it'll all work out. Besides, one of the benefits of arbitration is that it kind of takes the blame off the MCs once the award comes out. Then we can all hold hands and continue to build one of the world's greatest airlines together.

I don't speak for all, but I think it's safe to say that the majority of pilots from both airlines want this to get done as quickly and smoothly as possible, so that we can get to the task at hand of growth and expansion.

What I'm hearing from our MC is that they expect the SLI to be done by the end of 2011 AT THE EARLIEST. They are optimistic about things, but you have to realize that since we'll be employing a three panel arbitration team, you now have to coordinate the schedules of two MCs and three arbitrators not just one. This will have the obvious effect of the SLI not being so expeditious, but I think both the AAI and SWA pilots are happy that the award will not be handed out by just one person. There's much less likelihood of an award that's "way out in left field" when you have a multiple arbitrators.

Most important is the preservation of the culture at SWA, so again an award that is completely one-sided will not help in cultivating that culture going forward. That'd be a crying shame.