Actually this has gone beyond nonsense. There is no pressure at US Airways to trim fuel to an unsafe level. In fact over the last 2 years, and especially since dispatch was consolidated in PIT I have had to have fuel taken off because we were going to bump payload to carry unneccessary fuel. Landing in HNL with 2 hours of fuel on a VFR day is way beyond what is required. Fuel loads are too conservative, if anything.
These 8 pilots were taking on way more fuel on a percentage basis that all the other captains. The East pilots are also running the APU in flight to burn extra fuel "to show the company we mean business in our negotiations". What this has become is a rookie union, who had its roots in anti - ALPA radicals, trying to flex some muscle when they lack the spine to support it. They are playing a bogus "safety" card in negotiations knowing full well that there is no safety issue involved. The company was bringing them in for a day of ground school to determine why they were uploading so much fuel. There was no sim check involved nor was there any punishment involved since they would have had to be served Section 19 (discipline section of the contract) letters before they could be brought in. This is just some very unprofessional pilots making the rest of us look bad.