What did he say? Are you suggesting that ALPA could have stood firm against Age60 changes and still been effective on the hill? The political fall out would have been acceptable?
I first asked him if he believed the NPRM could be stopped at this point. His answer was "highly unlikely." He was fairly certain that the NPRM would be going forward this year no matter what. I followed up by asking him whether we could continue to have influence over the rule change while still maintaining our current policy of supporting the Age-60 rule. He was noncommittal on an answer to that. It could go either way, basically. So, I was left to make up my own opinion on how effective we could continue to be. All things considered, I believe it's worth the risk to follow the will of the membership and continue our opposition while still trying to be involved in the process.
Well maybe Prater isn't the guy to be in there? We know how he got there.... (bad UAL bad....) How do you think DW would've handled it?
Maybe? I don't think there's any "maybe" about it. The guy's in way over his head. He doesn't have a clue what he's doing. I said it before the election, and I'll keep saying it for the next 3 years.
I don't have any doubt that Duane would have handled this much better. Duane is far too savvy to make the idiotic mistakes that Prater has. At the very least he would have sent out a hell of a lot more communications to the membership on exactly why the position should be changed. But, I doubt he even favors changing the position in the first place.
I wouldn't say Prater backed doored everythink... there was an info campaign distributed to the membership...
BS. The only "info" was basically a description of what the BRP's job was. No discussion took place on the political situation in Washington. Prater released a short video and that was about it.
Age 60 to me is a big bump in the road.... but to waste too much time on it is futile... Open Skies is the Solid Brick wall that will stop our careers dead in its tracks....
Agreed. But if I can't trust Prater to handle a simple Age-60 issue, how can I trust him to handle the "big issue" of Open Skies?