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AFFILIATED WITH THE A. F. of L.

"SCHEDULE WITH SAFETY"

AIR LINE PILOTS ASSOCIATION
INTERNATIONAL
3145 WEST SIXTY-THIRD STREET
CHICAGO 29

TELEPHONE
GROVEHILL 6-2200

[[small logo]] 191

July 25, 1950

Mr. Michael A. Gitt
188-40 B 71st Crescent
Flushing, N.Y.

Dear Mike:

I have read your letter of July 6.  Your letter to Robert Wood, Editor of AVIATION WEEK, is excellent.  I agree that right now probably would be a bad time to get into the limelight.  I think we'd just better let things ride.  I understand Mr. Rentzel is having plenty of trouble and is headed for more -- a great deal more.  There is talk of kicking him upstairs or out -- one or the other.  He certainly wants to see me and bury the hatchet.  Several days ago, the same thing was again projected, and I'm scheduled to see him some time next week while in Washington.

On the other part of the problem, relating to the bidding of certain flying time on the Bermuda operation, no one knows for sure whether it will exist or not.  On the Simmons decision, I will get into the matter very shortly and will let you know the outcome.  I intend to talk this all over with Schy as soon as we can squeeze in a minute.  There are two courses of action we can pursue in this thing.  These two courses of action are, (1) We can disregard the decision and at the time it comes up, laugh it off the table and point to the fact that he didn't even know what he was deciding, or (2) We can go at it the other way and take it into court and dignify the thing, which also has its dangerous aspects because there's always the chance of losing.  Personally, right now, I would say that the best thing to do, if we could get the pilots to stand up, is to notify the company that we don't regard the decision as being accurate and he has refused to interpret it; therefore, as far as we're concerned, until he does, we will expect the agreement to be lived up to 100% as written.  In any event, I'll let you know what we come up with shortly, which, of course, will be merely in the form of a suggested course of action.

It was good to see you at LaGuardia.  The usual thing happened.  They rushed me into the airplane and there we sat for about 30 minutes.  We would have had time to talk over