Hi,

I used to be an employee of ACA, and have had many friends over there. Unfortunately, with the demise of FlyI, most of my friends are now at "greener" pastures. I guess they say in the airlines, that once an employee, always an employee -- I just don't give a rip about the stockholders, because publicly traded airlines are an absolutely stupid place to "invest" money. Anybody who doesn't know that, shouldn't be putting money in the stock market. Ok, to be more polite about it, if one wants to invest in the airlines, they must do so only after performing due diligence. In other words, caveat emptor or know what you're getting into.

I haven't heard one positive thing about Mesa, ever. The company's pay sucks, their work rules, suck, etc. As somebody who at one point in time was considering becoming an airline pilot, Mesa is not a place I'd like to work. ACA, before FlyI, was. Walmart might be a great corporation, but it sucks to work there. Same thing like Mesa. To watch ACA turn into another Mesa, or get bought out by Mesa, no thanks, and the employees knew it. The new UA "contract" would have left ACA in a lurch, and you don't have to buy it. Fact is, the contract basically allowed UA to jerk ACA around, cut their flying at will, and heck, terminate the contract at will, or the equivalent of it. That contract was not in ACA's best long term interest, and I'm not the only one who feels that way. As an employee, I could care less what the company stock is worth if the company is laying people off. Safe to say I wasn't an employee that held a lot of company stock.

I have some OPINIONS about the airline industry, and they are as follows:

1. Generally speaking, unions are a necessary evil in the airline world. They are a necessary evil in any industry where no individual posesses a unique skill. No airline "labor" employee posesses a unique skill. They are all trained to a specific standard.

2. The nature of union contracts drives wages to levels that are unsubstainable. During the bad times, the cheaper, junior employees are laid off, and the more expnesive employees are forced to take paycuts to lower the now "higher" average salaries.

3. Employees are rarely going to sacrifice what management wants. Management will take an airline into BK in order to force wage reductions.

4. BK kills off the value of the common stocks.

5. Common stock now worth nothing.

Say what you want about the "fools," but the BOD approved it, and the shareholders haven't ousted the BOD. Ergo, the shareholders haven't helplessly stood by. Every time I write that last sentence, nobody comes up with arguments to the contrary. IIRC, ACA's stock was trading at about $30 at its highest. I don't remember how much it tumbled when UA filed BK. After all, when a vast majority of your revenue is tied to a carrier in BK, and your contract has the potential to be terminated, what value does your product and corresponding stock really have?

As far as the pilots are concerned (typically the most vocal and vested labor group) they took a gamble too. A lot of them would have gone from being an RJ captain to an A319 captain, with a nice pay raise over night, as well as the ability to negotiate workrules better than Mesa. Mesa's considered the leech that started this whole cost war. Therefore, the pilots didn't blindly go along for the ride. As for the majority of the rest of the employees, the competing UAX carriers at IAD had to hire people to staff up the new flights. Lots of them came from ACA. If I had still been working there at the time of the switch, AWAC would have offered me up to three years of my seniority to go work for them. I probably would have, too.