forgot to bid

You guys can double check my math, but according to airlinepilotcentral SWA currently has 6,104 pilots. I do not believe that counts AirTran. If it does, my bad, but based on 568 SWA birds and 6,104 piltos they have an average of 10.75 pilots per plane. Close to the 11 you mention Sailing.

However, looking at the 22 D2 for Nov 2012, we will have 1,625 pilots on the MD88/90. If you go on the 152 fleet number then we average 10.69 pilots per airplane but if you add in the 13 incoming MD90s then the number is 9.85 pilots per plane.

IF those numbers are right, then we are staffing the MD88 with fewer pilots than SWA staffs the 737.

scambo1

T,
I know you are onto something with the SWA arc. It seems odd to me that their CFO is now the CEO, that rarely ends well. However, I dont see them dieing, just stagnating and rotting on the vine.

Your forward looking thoughts?...

scambo1

Take that Shiz. My FTB speaks for me.

Bucking Bar

Could be. That would be hilarious.

georgetg

I haven't seen "block hours" in the monthly, quarterly or annual reports.
From a financial standpoint the important number is production, as in ASM and cost of production as in CASM.

We even use that metric to regulate the JV in the form of production balance don't we?

What is the Delta pilot portion of CASM?
What is the WN pilot portion of CASM?



Cheers
George

Columbia

Lmfao.......

Rather B Fishin

George, I'm not sure if this is a rhetorical question but here ya go:

Airline comparison charts

In 2010 SWA pilot wage/salary was 1.09 and ours was .76 per ASM!!!!!

sailingfun

Don't know the actual pilot numbers at SW. However you would have to remove all pilots on MLOA, Sick, personal leaves, administrative pilots ect. from their total. To get a accurate number if you comparing our category numbers. What I am saying is you have to compare actual working pilots. Your number compares all pilots at SWA to only working pilots at Delta. We have about 15 percent of our pilots out on long term leaves, furlough bypass and disability ect.. I suspect SW has about the same.
What really makes the difference more compelling is that SWA flies their 737 more per day then Delta flies there M88's. No matter how you want to spin it SW is more efficient then Delta.
We could be just like SWA if we eliminated all pickup limits and allowed pilots to fly to FAR's at straight rates if desired. Some pilots have actually advocated that on here because they want to work more. If your in the bottom 1500 pilots at Delta you really might not like that option.

georgetg

That's my point!

Sailing could have gotten the CASM numbers from the same site but chose not to post them.

Delta has higher cost of production than WN.
Delta pilots make more ASMs per Dollar compensation than WN pilots.

When 2 Delta pilots fly 250 pax for a block hour rate that is 20% higher than WN, who is being more productive?

Cheers
George

forgot to bid

FWIW, we'd be even if you added a 9% jump in staffing to those numbers I posted.

A 14-15% jump would bring us up to around 11.3 pilots or .57 pilots more per plane than they run. Or put another way, if they ran with 11.3 pilots they'd need to add 5% or 327 pilots to their 6104 to staff 568 airplanes.

I'd say even in that case the numbers are close when we compare similar mission aircraft.