What you guys don't realise is that by resigning and looking from the outside of the fish bowl in, you screwed a lot of G/A pilots too. Many of you came back to G/A to fly Navajos and other light aircraft to prop up the system you had just resigned yourself from.
What do you think that did to those of those just starting out? What about those of those that were waiting to hear back from QF and told they just took a whole bunch of domestic airline pilots who had agreed to become S/Os?
This was the most poorly and stupidly planned strike in the history of Australia. What we can learn from this is to;
1. Act from a position of power by never leaving the cockpit.
2. Never resign from a position of union membership; less lose all rights within.
3. Engage a well rehearsed media machine as a spokesperson, not one of our own.
This one dispute caused an enormous amount of tension in my own family and at our own airport among former friends. I didn't "cross", another did, (a Kiwi who went to Ansett).
I have no regrets about my actions then or since, but wish the poor planning of others had not influenced our lives as they did.