Dan, Dan, Dan, please
You know as well as I do the "pilots of the past" with the help of greedy unions like ALPA wanted only to get paid to sit home and run their yogurt shops. We heard it all the time in the crew vans with the likes of the brain surgeons at United talking about the new contract is "like taking candy from a baby"
Staple Staple
Again, you are cherry picking mistakes of the past and ignoring the big picture. No question the UAL guys got way to cocky in the 90's. To their credit, they were dealing with predatory management so there is some justification there, but still, they went overboard and now they paid for it.
But you have to ask yourself, the UAL/CO pilots aren't on here slinging mud as vehemently as the SWA people on here are. UAL/CO are as similar operations as SWA/AT and yet you don't hear ALPA pilots running around saying Staple Staple. The DAL/NWA pilots have certainly handled their merger more maturely than what I see on here with the SWA folks.
BTW, you talk about the UAL pilots being cocky in the 90's. I sure see a lot of SWA pilots on here bragging about how much money they make and how much better paid they are than their peers. Sure sounds like a 90's UAL pilot to me. SWA built itself up when their pilots made substantially less than other pilots and they had a fuel hedge advantage. Neither is the case today and they have started to go head to head with the big boys. Should be interesting.