Smooth at FL450

....WBs that somebody hired today will never see the left seat in

We hire from delta’s regional feed all the time.

CJOs for classes 6 months out are because training scheduling needs room in the schedule for etops training and 400+ upgrades in the first 6 months of the year. Would you rather they keep piling on the FOs and forego the rest of the puzzle? United puts guys in the pool for over a year. 6 months isn’t a bad thing, all things considered. And everyone else has slowed down their hiring too

OhSnapAF

Assume it’s going to be 10+ years and if it’s less, it’s a bonus.

hoover

Had a delta JS On my flight the other day. Took him 17 yrs to upgrade on the 737 in LAX. He said if he went to FO 777 he'd be 30 from the bottom and can't even come close to CPT on the 777.
So yeah you can upgrade on the 717 or md90 fairly quick in NYC the good flying schedules or higher paying seats take quite a while.
I don't think they offer any better QOL than us other than looking at block hrs flown but then throw in the 2-3 hr sits in between legs of you want less block.
I think a significant amount of their wide body fling is code shared out as well. So not much growth on that side to keep bodies moving into those preference seats.
Their LTD blows ours away tho

saab2000

I’m thinking Malibu, Pacific Palisades or Beverly Hills.

This is sage advice.

Proximity

I think you need to consider which domicile you want. If you want to live in DEN or PHX, Southwest is for you. Denver is really senior at UA and AA is pulling back in PHX, for example. However, if you're in say Florida, NY, Boston, or Seattle, Southwest is a tougher sell.
Agree, however schedule flexibility is artificially high right now due to FO over-staffing.
Agreed.
Regional flying probably screwed up your career as much as it did mine, but it's pretty much as big as it will get. I don't see a legacy pilot group allowing scope to be relaxed further.

Right now we can hire from legacy partners, but they can take further measures to encourage their pilots to stick around. They'll pay the least they can get away with, which is 2-3x what it was ten years ago. They can pay more or increase the incentivize to move to mainline, thus reducing the supply of pilots available to SWA.


Many other airlines have initiated programs to make sure they will have pilots in the future, but so far we haven't. I'd be interested in why that is.

Not unique to us.


Exists, but tough to hold. Looking at my domicile for Nov, only 32% of the lines are 3/4. Want to weekends off...only 11% of the lines are 3/4 and weekdays.


True but should be looked at together with total compensation.


Many airplanes on order at the legacies also.

Agreed.

I know people hired around the same time as me at most places other then AA. I actually do a little better then my UA and DL peers, but as upgrade rapidly falls at both places and I remain an NB FO for many more years I'm guessing they will pull ahead as NB CAs or WB FOs. However, part of me doing better is because I average 125tfp per month and spend plenty of time manipulating my schedule. Our trips are more efficient but more work. I try to avoid doing to many trips that pay well in a row because they are just too tiring. We don't do redeyes and hopefully when we start doing them here I can avoid them.

The pilot I know that went to Fedex is ahead of me any probably always will unless there is most disaster with their pension. Hub turns aren't for everyone, but they do pay well.

If you haven't noticed from my previous posts I'm pretty happy to be working here and stayed here by choice. However, based on our efficiency, the profitability of the company, and that we have no WB flying we should be the highest paid NB pilots among our peers. When you make this comparison it should be at our contractually guaranteed TFP, not the 108/month TFP SWAPA uses for comparison.

Ihateusernames

Fwiw I have 459 FO senior to me that can hold Captain and I have been a captain for over a year and a half. I was told when I was in Dallas year or so ago the company wanted 12,000 pilots in a 5 year period. That adds up to what they have been doing hiring wise. They have to have a plan or QOL will go up while quality of paycheck will go down.


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ZapBrannigan

Say what you will about staffing, but I haven’t been JAd once in 2018 and I’m pretty darned happy about that!




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Proximity

There has to be a happy medium between being JA'd every other trip and OT trips valued below rig being bid straight....

Grumpyaviator

I agree with all that and it’s awesome, but:

No long call, turns 15 days off into 11 for a commuter
Almost no commutable trips, eating into days off

Preemptive answer: I’m not in a situation to move to domicile.

ZapBrannigan

The problem was that JA didn’t have anything to do with being the juniormost available pilot anymore. Instead it meant “just available”. The only recourse was putting the assignment in giveaway - but since CWA didn’t reflect the JA pay, it was hard to solicit bidders.

All they had to do was two things:
1. Get CWA to accurately reflect the pay
2. Make it so a pilot could choose to automatically put any extensions/JAs in giveaway and send out text alerts the moment they are assigned.

I’m convinced that would prevent the majority of unwanted extensions/JAs

There is a market for that flying, but bidders need to know about it.


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