We must learn from our past, lest we are doomed to repeat it....
There is a lot of knowledge that some of the more senior guys can impart, just cause we have been around a while. I was a cocky junior FO in 1999 while I sat on that bus. I made some stupid statement at the time like, "There is no way Express is getting those CRJ200's up for bid. We (XJ) are getting the Avros, our training department is up to speed, we just got a new GO that looks like NASA and we are three times the size of Express." I was wrong, what I said on that bus was wrong, and soon after XJ went into a 5 year slump that took us into some depths no other regional has had to face.
We talk of brand scope and working together as if it is going to magically happen, it's not. It's going to take the other groups that are not deep in negotiations and pitted to lose everything, stepping up to the plate and working harder than ever. Problem is, if your group is the more stable and possibly growing, your pilot group tends to be more cocky. The thank goodness it's not me complex (...not my fight, I made it to the major...they've been growing for awhile, now it's their turn to feel the pain...)
XJ's been though a lot the last couple of years, to say we lowered the bar in anyway is untrue. We held it as high as we could under the circumstances, if we gambled right (time will tell) we lost nothing. We (XJ, along with NWA, Compass, and every other ALPA carrier) now need to be working harder than ever to help 9E in their negotiations (with no undermining agenda), and 9E needs to accept that help and understand that we've been there.
