General Tool,
Since I usually disagree with you totally, I will open up with this YOU ARE RIGHT. You are starting to get it, SKYW formed SAPA as a communication tool for managment to talk to the pilot group, they pay more than 600k a year to run SAPA(or so I hear). Now you see how it works, you work real hard as a SAPA player, deliver something of real value(70 for 50 seat pay), bingo Cheif pilot job drops into your lap, reward for services rendered. They tell us to "SUK IT" every time they issue the paychecks, and I bet they snicker about how easy it was to pull the pilots sphincters over their eyes.
SAPA dispenses the kool-aid via state of the art Slurpee/Frostee machines that are suspiciously similar to the frozen margarita machines at many fine mexican food eateries. For a measly 600K they get tremendous value in terms of workrule/policy manual screwings.
I think for the first time SKYW mgmt has made a very large tactical mistake, in their greed to acquire larger airframes they agreed to take furloughed UAL pilots, these pilots are not as sucecptable to the siren song of the kool-aid and have been poisoning/educating the newhires about the realities they are experiencing. As a quick followup, every newhire that I have flown with that went through training for free is totally pissed that they are now paying while in training, and wonder where their retro pay is. I think the company is now realizing that the union is on their doorstep and are trying to slide as many tidbits to their side of the table before that becomes impossible. As to the 50-99 agreement, the kool-aid swillers screwed all of us, I voted no and am not 70 qualified, nor will I ever be with this pay scale.
Gen. open your eyes and take note you can watch your payscale move down to ours or you can join forces with us and bring ours toward yours, choice is yours. I think you might be able to see which way the scales have been sliding lately and I can safely bet which way mgmt wants the scales to slide.
Now back to your regularly scheduled rant!
PBR