I know my pocket has gotten way fatter living off the high life of Contract '02! High five good buddy! Gee I wonder if Unical has to report it's 'bottom line' and cost information in any of that Wall Street gibberish that comes out like 4 times a year? Btw, surprised I haven't seen you down in the Scab Cave in Humble this summer. I'm sure you have cashed in all the VJM golden tickets that the feds allow...

I swear I've flown with this ****in waste-of-space, or someone like him puking the same nonsense. I recall a comment being made to the effect of "the pie is only so big...they can't afford to give us a raise...". To which my reply is "lets just shut it down then, I'm young enough to recover,,, but you I'm not so sure about."

Just like United pilots when faced with the bankruptcy contract???

United pilots asked for more than they knew the company could afford, and when the company said the economy changed and we can't afford this anymore, did they shut it down?? Rather than shutting the place down, they just accepted layoffs of 2000 pilots, pay cuts of > 30%, and slashed work rules.

There are two options. Shut it down, or deal with the consequences. Last time, United pilots chose the latter. I doubt the pilot group as a whole has the guts to shut the place down.

Personally I would rather see us negotiate a fair contract and have some freaking stability in this industry, rather than negotiate some crazy industry leading contract and then see layoffs, major pay cuts, and slashed work rules once the economy changes again.

Those who fail to learn from the mistakes of history are doomed to repeat them in the future. I would like to not see a repeat of UAL's C2000.

Well when we get a great contract feel free to donate as much as you like back to the company. Both side agree to these contracts prior to them being put in place so both sides must see value.

I would like to see people stop drawing the WRONG conclusions from C2000.

The UAL pilots could have had the non-instustry leading CAL contract of that era and UAL still would have filed BK. The >30% drop in revenue that UAL experienced in 2001/2002 was greater than the combined payroll for all 100K UAL employees. The pilots could have worked for free and UAL would still have faced a dire cash-flow crisis given the timing of UA's debt schedule.

And the extreme revenue shockwave impacted every single major US airline except for SWA which luckily had no exposure where the impart was deepest: international markets. Even the two major airlines that barely averted bankruptcy (AA & CAL) ended up with deeply concessionary pilot contracts as part of their enormous corporate restructurings outside of bankruptcy.

The lesson from history: there was no escape---even for the airlines that started with "fair" (i.e. bottom tier) pilot contracts. (Of course, non-major JetBlue flourished during that period while paying A320 Captains $80/hr.)

The United States government recently awarded United more than $974 million in estimated contracted revenue from travel by government employees and contractors during fiscal 2012 on 1,741 city pairs.

“This is the largest amount of revenue and largest number of city pair awards ever awarded to a single carrier,” said Military and Government Sales Manager Tom Billone. We won the contracts for 975 domestic and 766 international city pairs.

The General Services Administration (GSA) has been managing the program for more than 30 years. It has grown from 11 markets to more than 5,000. Airlines compete to win these contracts on a route-by-route basis.
In awarding city-pair contracts, the GSA considers the availability of nonstop service, total number of flights, flight availability, average elapsed flight time, availability of jet service and price of service.

CHICAGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Fitch Ratings has upgraded the issuer default rating (IDR) of United Continental Holdings, Inc. (UAL) and its two airline operating subsidiaries to 'B' from 'B-'.

The upgrade follows a year of significant debt reduction and strong free cash flow generation since the closing of the United-Continental merger on Oct. 1, 2010. In the face of heavy fuel cost pressure during the first half of 2011, UAL has consistently reported industry-leading revenue per available seat mile (RASM) growth while funding heavy debt maturities out of internally generated cash flow.

Since when did caring about the financial well being of your company make you not only anti-union, but a scab? Does that mean you are all rooting for the company to fail??

It just amazes me how brainwashed some people are on these forums.

I care about my own financial well being. Is it tied to the companies, yes. Should I forsake my financial well being for the companies, no. They wouldn't forsake their's for mine. In fact they already proved that in 2008. It wouldn't have even made a ding in their balance sheet but it put a big hole in mine. I should go out and get everything that I can get because they are not going to give me anything. The company is making tons of money.