Excusing airlines from the umbrella of the RLA would recover some actual teeth to the power of organized labor wrt airline pilots. The NMB are a bunch of pro-management jackals, right along with federal BK judges. That so called mediation process is a joke. It dilutes the power of airline unions to the point of being laughable. There's no good faith mediation going on, just more corporatist "get back in line serf!" injunctions and ice periods, while people are forced to work under contracts (or NO contracts!) with amendable dates 4 years in the past. Gimme a break.
Look no further than the issue of this very thread.
Judge already swept the rug from under the pilots. Nothing to see here, move along. Standard. If you didn't see that coming as quick as it did, you're smoking glue.
My concerns going forward is the threat of cabotage gaining actual traction in an all majority anti-labor Congress. The flying plebe continues to demand utility-like access to airline travel, and they don't care one iota about perceptions of safety. They get on board Allegiant airplanes every day even with the prior knowledge they don't run a full weekly schedule (stranded) and have had the most egregious frequency of engine related precautionary landings as of late (ValuJet part deux). Pilots to them are overpaid bus drivers, and I'm convinced consumers really don't care about being flown around the CONUS by flag of convenience tails and Southwest Asia crews. Once they crack the cabotage door, it's game over. The regionals will dry up and the house of cards collapses, because nobody in the aggregate is going to go through this hassle if the pot at the end of the regional pay cut is merely to earn 75K in the left seat of a category II aircraft, let alone 120K for the left seat of a cat IV ship.
If you're over 50, sure this doesn't keep you up at night. But if you're younger than 40......
One thing is true about this industry. Post 9/11/01 and the explosion of the internet, no one has the excuse of
"I had no idea the industry was this volatile..." anymore, myself included. We make our bed, we lay on it.