Stop it with this BS "leverage" talk. So sick of hearing. We have none. So many times airlines have gone into SEC 6 talks with so-called leverage to still take 4-5 years to get a contract agreed upon. That's 4-5 years of loss pay raises that you can never get back. No retro. Are you some newbie that hasn't gone thru this? Pull out the calculator and see what the future value of money on present gains does to your bank account in the short and long run. You never catch up and won't even come close. it's not about selling out - it's about being smart here. Talk about greed and stupidity. That's what SEC 6 is all about and you end up losing anyhow. When will some pilots learn.

Just because you don't understand it doesn't mean we don't have leverage. Thankfully, you were not the MC when Dubinsky forced UAL to park their brand new 747-400s. The company simply cannot utilize the full potential of the 787s and even the long haul 777s without relief on FRMS and 117 waivers and extensions.

Now how much leverage that is is a matter for debate.

Probably the strongest MC United has had but then again he had a group of pilots willing to do the right thing for the United pilots and not the self-serving interests we see today.

That is an excellent point. If the MEC had let the pilots have membership ratification on LOA-22 in March I am confident it would have passed overwhelmingly.

I cannot, for the life of me, understand why we would want to make it difficult and expensive to operate our most profitable airplanes, on routes a lot of pilots dream of flying (not me, I hate long haul).

This harks back to the Dubo 1.0 days, when ALPA didn't want 50 seaters at the mainline. That ALPA national decision was a catastrophe for every airline pilot in America. Years later, we complain how the airlines "screwed" us by outsourcing our flying. We did it, to ourselves.

Like a couple of others said, the airline can just park older aircraft, and code share the new flying away. Don't we all beeaach about them doing that all the time?

ST called this fear mongering. Perhaps it is. I wish we had more fear mongering 20 years ago before we code shared half of our domestic feed to a bunch of RJ outfits that operate as crew-leasing companies.

This deal, the company is getting something from us, that we also want. For that, we are almost guaranteed industry leading pay for a while. I call this a win-win.

There are lots of reasons. #1 is safety. We don't want to allow the company to force fatigued pilots to fly so the devil will be in the details of the agreement.

Next is that it represents significant leverage, and you might have noticed that the company is quite slow to fix issues that are important to us unless they need something. Now they need something so we might want to look at our list of issues like pay, benefits, reserve, trip trading (bad-worst TT), pay per day (vaca, training, etc.), sick leave system (DAL 270 hours/year vice 60 @ UAL), paying us correctly, etc.

Its total fear mongering. They have the planes now with a bunch more on order. They're not going to park them. They're not going to call the bogeyman and give him the routes. They want us to relax something the DAL guys already have because those flights can be very lucrative. That issue along with (many) refusing to extend our duty day killing them on the WB flying. Those are the two reasons they initiated this process. Sorry to keep repeating this, but when is the last time they ever came to us for anything?

I need the coin just as much as you do. But if we go this route, you can forget about "next time" on any QOL issues because that day will be pushed a long long way off. They won't negotiate at the next amendable date because they will have us right where they want us. They will have zero reason to come to the table. They already hold most of the cards. Hard to imagine handing them any of ours.

I guess I'm just an irascible old fart.

Hold on.... No one can ever "force" a fatigued pilot to fly. And no pilot, by law, may fly a flight they don't feel they are fit to fly. No MOU, AIP, or reach-around will change that. If you're suggesting that the MOU 22 and FRMS positions are trading safety for pay the there is no negotiation. Ever. So if THAT's the case, then we have zero leverage here because we would never exchange safety for contract gains. The company could offer us 100 hours a month for straight long call reserve and no moveable days off and the correct answer would still be "NO". Safety is never for sale. So unless you're advocating that there MOU 22 and FRMS changes should never ever be negotiated (thus eliminating any incentive for the company to negotiate), the safety argument should be put to bed.

James, you were here in 2008. They can and will park airplanes on a whim. Hell they made it an even 100 just because the number sounded cool. They could EASILY park the rest of the 747's, 767's and 757's if it didn't fit the new reality of their economic landscape, whether it be this deal failing, a terrorist attack, or an economic downturn. If it becomes uneconomical to fly the route, they simply won't do it. You know it, and I know it

Actually, they have come to us, and not in the distant past. I believe it happened twice, post bankruptcy. One, I remember a couple of the details. I don't remember what we gave them, but I think in about 05 we got 12 days off for NB (it went to 10 in BK), and a trip rig. The trip rig was crap, but it was better than nothing.

That deal moved the bar forward. Our elected union officials felt those needed fixed first.

The company wants something from us (that benefits us). This time, our elected union officials demanded a short list of improvements, pay being one of them. Our own union decided that these items needed improved first, even more than going into Sect 6. Or, at least they will decide in the next couple of weeks if they are worth it.