Originally Posted by dvhighdrive88 (Post 1222580)

Second, imagine how much it will cost an airline to bring them back to life and be safe at a place like LAX or ORD. Imagine the sim hours, IOE and safety risk management. It's much steeper than one can envision being an active line guy.

Originally Posted by Flying the Line, Vol II, chap 18

The “might-have-beens” of history, although fascinating, are usually fruitless. But there can be no doubt about the importance of those first few strikers Lorenzo personally persuaded to cross the line. There is a vast difference between the “October scabs” and those who succumbed to sheer hopelessness many months later, particularly after the Bildisco Decision, when it was apparent that Lorenzo would be able to sustain his operation with full approval of the federal courts.

If the Continental strikers had been able to hold those first critical 300 pilots on their side of the picket line in October, Lorenzo almost certainly would have capitulated. For three nervous weeks, Lorenzo trembled on the edge of defeat. He didn't have enough management pilots to fly his projected schedule for more than a few days, and the sheer logistics of requalification meant that he couldn't get enough of the 400 Continental furloughees or “off-the-street” new-hires into his cockpits in time to save the situation.

In any case, Lorenzo didn't advertise for “permanent replacement” new-hires until November. But as October progressed, he was getting enough picket-line crossers to hope that he might not have to hire any pilots “off the street."

Events that occurred in the first three weeks of the Continental strike almost foreordained its unhappy outcome. As we have seen, Continental's dazed MEC told pilots to report to work “under duress” (whatever that meant), following the initial 72-hour bankruptcy shutdown. Lorenzo would not have been able to fly the schedule he planned if the Continental MEC had ordered a walkout from the start.

When the Continental MEC belatedly initiated the strike three days later, on October 1, some pilots, accustomed by now to Lorenzo's Emergency Work Rules, stayed in their cockpits. This group (about 75 pilots) would be joined by approximately 200 more crossovers in October.