Fellow Pilots,
Several reporters forwarded a letter to us today authored by what we trust is the outgoing bargaining agent. The contents and tone of the letter were dishonest and designed to incite. The only positive I am able to report to you was that this ‘mud ball’ was signed in Herndon and not by a fellow US Airways pilot. The key complaint seems to center around the lanyards competition (score one for USAPA) and an incident where a loyalist from ALPA’s FPL bus tour crashed a get-together sponsored by the deposed PHL reps and successfully baited one of the attendees into a trivial altercation.
The letter alleges company favoritism towards USAPA and allegations of thuggish behavior by unnamed “USAPA supporters.†The tactic behind the communication is transparent; the letter is nominally addressed to Mr. Parker but was immediately transmitted to multiple media outlets hoping to generate news items critical of USAPA for you to read in the newspaper. Communications of this sort from the four-letter acronym are clear evidence to us that the battle of ideas has been conceded in Herndon, VA.
We promised you things would get interesting.
To our most senior pilots, all of us at USAPA want to thank you for your incredible support during the past 10 months. If there was ever any doubt as to our solidarity as a pilot group, those of you who were not affected by the arbitration mess have put that issue to rest. The NMB cards and financial contributions sent by our most senior pilots have exceeded our wildest expectations and we thank you. USAPA would like to return the favor by extracting all of us from ALPA merger policy before management sells the airline, again.
I believe it would be useful to draw back from the passion of the moment and consider why we are at this fork in the road. For the volunteers and officers of USAPA, we believe the issue at hand is repeated representational failures by the existing bargaining agent. The Nicolau mess was just the latest.
One month to freedom!
Mark Thorpe
Interim VP