Thinking man

I did FTI 8 or 9 day course a year and half ago for $4895 ($100 bucks off for signing up with a friend).

flap

Southwest lost bookings because of 9/11. Other airlines lost passengers, crew, and planes.

That's why they didn't have to furlough.

727C47

by your logic Delta,and Northwest,and Continental didn't have to furlough either. They all had guys and girls on the street within weeks.

contrail67

It will just give them more time to pay off their type rating....

OscartheGrouch

Entrails,

So your contribution to this discussion is "the type rating" argument? Best "investment" I and many others ever made.

River6

WA
Article in the Fort Worth Stat Telegram business section about SWA, Gary Kelly is quoted saying, "the airline will shrink by 4% by the end of 2009." If you google I'm sure you can find it. The whole article is posted on the SWAPA forum.

Soulshine

You're entitled to your opinion, certainly, but I'd venture to guess you don't have any experience with, and you don't actually work for Southwest. There are about 35,000 employees there who have a culture, which includes things like "We won't furlough," and it's got a fair bit of inertia to it. So I'm not sure GK privately disregards this idea, but even if he did, I'm not sure the other 35,000 would actually lay down and let it happen. It could happen, anything could happen, but if you think GK and SWA are indistinguishable from any and every other airline in their mentality, well again, you have your opinion. Choose accordingly.

I don't even have to ask.

Oh, and to play by my own rules...
In the pool.

MILPILOT17

Soul, SPOT-ON! I think a lot of these people are going to be surprised when SWA pulls the rabbit out of the hat. I wouldn't wish a furlough on anyone, but some of these morons could care less about anyone but themselves; that's why they didn't make it past the PD when they interviewed. Good luck to all the poolies! Hang in there as it might not be as long as you think before you're in Dallas.

ACEFLYERSWA

A little update from our union pres:


SWAPA has indeed asked the Company to hire pilots several times in our history because the Company had in every instance grossly undermanned the operation resulting in significant quality of life issues for our pilot group including extremely high JA and on line reroutes. If you've been her any time at all, you know exactly what I'm talking about. The most recent request for the Company to hire pilots came from SWAPA about one year ago and it was in response to excessive JA and reroutes among our pilot group. There was concurrently very high reserve utilization which contributed to the JA problem. Flight Operations agreed and scheduled several classes to alleviate the shortage. Unfortunately it took several months for those classes to come on line due to growth we were experiencing and the resultant hiring for those additional aircraft.


As we were moving close to optimal staffing in the summer of 2008, senior management made a decision to cut capacity by approximately 4.5% beginning in December 2008 with the bulk of the reduction occurring in early January this year. Unfortunately nobody in senior management told Flight Operations, specifically Capt. Chuck Magill, so the hiring continued. That hiring continued until the news of the schedule reduction became public. You will recall that that Capt. Magill found out about the reduction the same way all of us did and that was an article in the Dallas paper. As soon as the capacity was confirmed, SWAPA requested that the Company immediately cease all hiring to mitigate the effect on our pilots in 1Q09. Capt. Magill agreed and suspended hiring. But the problem for 1Q09 was already set. We are estimated to be around 250+ pilots extra right now. With a given pool of flying, the excess of pilots right now has driven trip totals well below normal even for February. The good news is that trip totals should move towards normal levels beginning in March and continue through at least the summer. Beginning in September, Flight Operations is set to begin phase two of the RNP transition training which will require several hundred of our group to be in training each week. This will keep trip totals near the normal range through completion of RNP training sometime in 2Q10.


So what's the solution to over manning situations such as this one? One word...communication. If senior management had brought Flight Operations into the capacity reduction discussion at all, the over manning situation could have been greatly reduced if not completely mitigated. That's the quick history of "SWAPA asking the Company to hire" pilots. But that is old news now and we've got the extra pilots (I'm glad every one of you are here!). All of us feel the pinch in our wallets because of the lack of communication in the headquarters. Please don't misunderstand me; I fully support the Company reducing grossly unprofitable flights in January. In fact, I was shocked at the amount of money we were losing on these flights and why it took so long to cut them. My beef is with poor inter-departmental communication creating a hardship on our group (and our Flight Attendants). The problem didn't have to occur. The follow on questions and rumors about furlough because of the overstaffing are just that, rumors. I have heard nothing from management about any talk of furloughs and don't expect to. So when/if you hear talk about it, please dismiss it out of hand.

4th Level

Yea, ya know, I hate to be the one who brings up facts, but this has to be addressed; SWA will furlough if needed - if it can happen under Herb, it can certainly happen under Gary. In the early 80s the furlough notices were all but sent to 40 pilots. The only reason those guys stayed on the property was because SWAPA stepped in and everyone took a reduction in pay to keep those guys on board. There was no "caring" from SWA - it was business -and that is the way it was. The sooner you realize, while SWA is a fantastic place to work, it really is just business, the better (imo). Gary (or Herb) isn't your dad and this isn't a "family" - it's a business and we are hourly employee's.

You mention that you haven't taken a pay cut. All of the line totals are down for Dec, Jan and Feb with very little discretionary flying available to make up the difference. That is a pay cut.

And before I'm labeled as a malcontent or told "if you're not happy leave" - let me be clear; I'm very happy at SWA and don't want to work anywhere else. But I feel a little truthful perspective was in order.