My opinion, in regard to merger integration, just in case it happens some day.

Remember the TWA/AA merger? Just a few years ago ALPA agreed to pay $53 million dollars after an 11 year fight with a few members of TWA for misrepresenting them (via a duty of fair representation suit) in the merge. APA placed the 2,500 most senior American pilots at the top of the list. It then folded in about 1,100 of the most senior TWA pilots into the AA list at a ratio of about one TWA pilot for every eight AA pilots. The American union then put the remaining TWA pilots at the bottom, after the most junior American pilots.

Remember the Airtran/SWA merger? The most senior guy at Airtran was went from number 1 to number 1,647 overnight.

Seems like in both those cases the independent Union served their members interests a bit better than the 800 pound gorilla did.

(The full Airtran/SWA integration in a nutshell: The top 1,646 slots go to SWA pilots. The next 116 AirTran captains are ratio'd with the next 725 SWA pilots.
The next 208 AirTran captains are ratio'd with the next 1351 SWA pilots.
The next 581 AirTran captains are ratio'd with the next 2018 SWA pilots.
The first 142 AirTran FOs are ratio'd with the next 142 SWA pilots.
The rest of the 649 AirTran FOs are stapled to the bottom of the SWA FO list.
The pilots hired at SWA after the merger was announced are next.
The pilots hired at AirTran after the merger was announced are next.
The pilots hired at both carriers after the transaction closed on May 2 are in DOH order at the very bottom.)

Hey Zoo, just for clarification, isn't G4 Teamsters? Thanks for your input btw, it really helps. Truly.

Yep - they are.

Those independent unions are also 5x the size we are. It was different when FAPA was taking on just Frontier. An independent union the size of FAPA cannot sustain against a giant like Indigo.

We fared pretty well against "giants" like alpa and teamsters. What makes you think that we can't bargain with indigo just the same? I just don't view them as some insurmountable powerhouse that only alpa has a chance against. What we've accomplished to date is very impressive. I'll take past performance over unfulfilled promises any day.

Not to mention, what about after the ipo? At that point indigo is out and we are just another publicly traded company like anyone else. Fapa still can't fulfill our needs? The only thing that is limiting our goals is the expectation and dedication of our electorate.

As stated before, Fedex went from ALPA to independent to ALPA. Also, if you go to the AA subsection, there is a discussion there about Apa also going ALPA. One other thing, ALPA is more than just bargaining a contract. To me, the most important aspect of ALPA is the safety advocacy.

and if we ever expect to have "the airplane" to pay the same wherever it is flown then we need one voice and one negotiator not a bunch of " me first, disenfranchised, college boy associations"....United we stand, Divided we fall....period....looking forward to the day that we have an Airline Pilot Union

Your Union is only as good as your local council. Regarding ALPA, you might want to review a little Frontier/ALPA history. There's a whole bunch of old Frontier pilots who will swear that ALPA colluded with United to prevent a merger in 86. This left a lot of Frontier pilots on the street.

It's inevitable

I wouldn't take that bet. Not much room for improvement other than efficiency of scale with a spirit merger. If Franke or whoever it is after an ipo decides to combine with either Virgin or JetBlue there is still plenty meat on the bone to cut. He could tear either of their products down to a no frills ala cart product like frontier and produce +20% yields. Plenty of room for improvement for those combos generating plenty of value for the shareholder. The JetBlue and Virgin employee groups would hate it but Wall Street doesn't give a **** about anything but money.