The pax were never at risk. The plane taxied into the grass! The only risk was to the brusied ego's of those "NON ROOKIES" You friends get into the press and make bold statements like "America west pilots are rookies" yet none of these rookies taxied into the grass. "America west pilot have far less experience than our seasoned pilots" Yet none of our pilots shot and killed an unarmed A320 at 10,000ft!!
I'm glad that you clarified that and thanks for keeping this somewhat civil. I've never said that the USAirways East pilots were blameless in all this. Statements like that in the press are juvenile to say the least. My point all along has been that this is a mess and it didn't have to happen. If the east pilots held to DOH at the expense of all else during negotiations (on that there seems to be some dispute) then they were being unrealistic. A junior co-pilot at one carrier should not displace a captain at another. To me, the big injustice was stapling all of the pilots who had been furloughed on the day of integration below the most junior FO at AWA as they were mostly back on the property by the actual arbitration. I've never contended that they should have received their DOH, only that they should have been included in the relative slotting formula. Now, if that stapling was required by the guidelines under which the arbitrator had to rule (I don't know if that is the case or not) I would argue that as a flaw in the ALPA merger policy and I would take the USAirways East negotiators to task for not seeing the inevitability of it and avoiding an arbitration at all costs. If that is the case, they would have known the stapling was coming and were willing to sacrifice those junior FO's for the senior. This willingness to sacrifice the junior for the senior has been a problem at AAA for years and is one reason why the de-certification does not surprise me at all.
I also think that the east should have been willing to compromise on the top 500+ slots going to east pilots as a quid-pro-quo to fix the stapling. I am unaware whether any meaningful offers were ever made after the award. What I do see is that both sides are so angry at this point, I doubt that the situation can improve at all.
I am also not convinced that the USAirways pilots (east or west) will be better off with USAPA but I was appalled at ALPA's campaign during the election. The only argument that I saw was that an independent union would be unable to provide the level of support and infrastructure that ALPA would. I saw no acknowledgement of past mistakes or of the great cost of that infrastructure. Before I left USAir, I was active in the union and saw first hand the dysfunction of the MEC and exorbitant pay and lifestyles of the "ALPA Elite".
In short, I saw a possibility for compromise that neither side was willing to consider (pre and post award) with the result that this whole thing stands a very real chance of imploding which is something that will be good for no one. I have seen very little real leadership in this whole mess. To my thinking, the national leadership (sic) should have seen the potential for all this and pulled out all the stops to forge a compromise. Prater should have been at every local meeting on both sides. This has been a huge blow to ALPA and a huge blow to our profession and no one involved is blameless.