I told you you would not like what the 9th actually just said.
They said, in layman's terms, you do not have to use the Nic, but if you use anything less and get it passed you are going to get sued and lose. Unless of course you use something the West finds tolerable enough to finally throw up our hands and quit suing you. But here is the fact, you are not getting DOH, not DOH with C&Rs, not modified DOH on LOS, nor any other unilaterally imposed DOH scheme. Anything less than the Nic and you get sued and lose.
The two liberal judges are trying to further mediate the dispute. They are giving you room to do the right thing and simply use the Nic or make other compromises. The conservative judge called BS, said you are guilty and should have to pay for the harm already inflicted.
But to directly answere your question, it does not matter how the rest of the airline merged, anything less than the Nic harms the West. We do not have to tell a judge and jury about Joe Monda, we told an arbitrator about Joe, and the arbitrator decided that Joe benefitted immensly by this merger as it almost instantly moved him from his bottom about to be furloughed position, to a point with some security and furlough protection with hundreds of pilots below him. Just did not give him my captain seat, so it was not good enough for usapa.
Crackpot judges? Hand tied juries? Senile arbitrators? Greedy west pilots? Here is the news flash Swan. The key to our first deal and any future deal was not Wake or Nicolau or some other supposedly biased unfair east bogey man. All we ever needed or will ever need in the future is an impartial decision. The key is you are in the wrong, you hold the moral low ground, you have rationalized a course of action that has compromised your integrity.
Get it yet?
INTEGRITY MATTERS