The controllers’ big hope was that the Air Line Pilots Association, with forty thousand members, would honor their picket lines and decline to fly. That would have assured a PATCO victory. But the pilots’ union, which PATCO had done little to cultivate, was angry because the controllers went on strike during the peak summer flying season, when pilots’ hours and earnings soared. In a crushing blow to the strike, the pilots decided against honoring PATCO’s picket lines.