Always Flyin,

You have very nicely described AFA's position during those negotiations in the 1980s (at the time of the Pan Am Pacific route acquisition).

Unfortunately, UAL management was adamant that they be able to pay F/As flying within the Orient significantly less. Management claimed they had to do this to remain competitive with other airlines operating intra-Asia.

The compromise was the BKK and SIN F/As not being AFA-represented, in exchange for our very strong scope clause language (the "carrot").

At the time I would have agreed with you that we were crazy to allow non-AFA F/As to staff UAL aircraft. But in seeing how stubborn UAL was being about the issue, and especially more recently now that our scope clause has turned out to be EXTREMELY valuable for us (and has been upheld in court when UAL violated it, costing UAL millions of $$$ in penalties), in hindsight it turned out to be the best thing for us to do, IMO. The carrot turns out to have been made of gold.

I agree with you in some respects and I still don't like the idea of non-AFA F/As crewing UAL flights but I see it more as the least worst option to have chosen.

Hopefully now our scope clause will survive the aftermath of the Ch.11 filing!