SlipKid

Really?

The 737 type was a requirement just to apply to SW back then. It didn't matter how you got it, you just had to have it. The vast majority bought them, although some were already typed at other airlines.

I had apps in at all the usual suspects for 10+ years by that point. SW wasn't even on my radar until a few friends got hired here, and started bugging me to get the type and apply. NO one was hiring at the time, and after 10 years in the regionals, I made the decision to bite the bullet and get it.

It was a gamble, and every day, I am thankful that it's paid off...... in spades. I did the type in a week, and my only regret is not doing it a few years sooner.

Should I have waited a few more years, saved the cash and gone to a legacy when they started hiring again?

Ask Zap how that's worked out for him, not to mention thousands of our peers.........

How many of them would, if they could, go back and pay (the equivalent of a good paying 4 day at my current rates) for the type just to avoid getting hosed by the lost decade? Not to mention that they'd be sitting in the top 10% at SW now?

Almost to a man, the guys who busted my stones about getting the type were getting theirs and asking me for LORs after 9/11.

As a pure civilian scumbag, (minus my other 4 type ratings and my FE rating), I also paid for the training for all of my other certs from private through ATP.

I guess I'd better start voting YES! on concessions like the rest of you!

ZapBrannigan

Good post.

SWA wasn’t even on my radar in the 1990s. I wasn’t even interested.

When things started turning south in 2000 (the DOJ failed to approve the USAir/United merger and Stephen Wolf didn’t have a plan B) I bid the 737 just to get the type - just in case.

It still took me 12 years to come to SWA after being furloughed in 02’. Wish I had done it sooner, but it took me a while to realize that I didn’t want to go back to Airways. Then it took me a little while to realize I wanted to leave the Fortune 500 flight department I was working for. Next thing I knew, I was over 40 and applying for my fourth major airline - and definitely not the youngest guy in class anymore.

Nowadays a lot of the Captains I fly with are younger than I am - and apparently better decision makers!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

hoover

I gave a SW guy a checkout in a 182 in 1999 and he mentioned I should come to SW when I had the chance. I remember thinking no way do I want to fly a 737 for the rest of my career. All I wanted to do was long haul international .
Glad I ignored my own advice and after meeting the mins then applying for over 10 yrs I made it. Glad I did. I shudder anytime the leg is over 2 hrs now

RJSAviator76

Well Slip, since nowadays everyone here is actually GETTING PAID to get a 737 type rating if they don't have one already, I'd say that's definitely a step in the right direction, wouldn't you?

If only now we could get the company to pay for uniforms, jackets, parking, CrewBid, CrewBuddy... who knows. But on the second thought, let's not press to test that one as it may bankrupt the company.

SlipKid

Absolutely! The type was a stupid hiring requirement, especially since it wasn't required by the feds for FOs to have it back then. I am glad it's gone.

That said, the market has changed markedly in the last decade, and the company had no choice but to eliminate it if they wanted to get enough folks to apply.

How about being made whole, at least, for the 800? The pilots, through crack "negotiating" by SWApA, and then voting YES! for SL6, essentially, paid for, and continue to pay to fly it, and it's trickled down to the 700s too. Funny how that's rarely mentioned.


Don't worry, 84% of us will ensure that never happens.

Smokey23

I go back & forth on this issue. Since all the above are basically just another form of compensation, I think I would prefer to have our NC focus on being the highest-paid pilots in the business while I focus on getting the best value for my uniform, parking, headset, or any other tools of my trade. Not only is this simpler for all involved, it is also based on my nearly two decades of always receiving from our cheap-a$$ airline, the absolute lowest-cost, barely-does-the-job product or service**. To wit:

Headset? Telex ANR-850 (no thanks)

Uniforms? M&H (no thanks)

Parking? If it were actually provided here in PHX, I guarantee it would be the 44th St lot (a big no thanks)

You get the idea. Why spend negotiating capital on something that I will never use? I grant we have the worst of both worlds now (not the best paid and not comped for the incidentals) but something to think about for 2020.


**Credit where credit is due: the ONE exception to this rule are the company-furnished iPads. At least they didn't take a cue from Delta and foist that POS Surface upon us!

RJSAviator76

You don't think you contributed to this mindset by buying your type rating?

Gary has been around this place for over 30 years. VdV for over 25. I don't know how long RM has been around, but the point is, all these people observed throughout their entire management career here were pilots who were bending over backward to pay for their type ratings just to get an interview here.

Yes, it was a stupid requirement, but what was even dumber was that pilots who HAD to have been captains or aircraft commanders for at least 1,000 hours pay money for a type rating just to have an interview opportunity. In short, you conditioned the bean counters that this was an acceptable behavior. You also conditioned the pilot population that somehow this was an acceptable practice. For Pete's sakes, you're proud of having done it and wish you had done it sooner!

Now, you want an industry-leading contract and you're negotiating against those same bean counters who watched you, despite being highly qualified, pay thousands just for a mere opportunity to interview. Any halfway decent bean counter would rightly tell you to shut up and color, and (un)fortunately for us, we have some of the best damn bean counters in the world.

And on the other side, we have pilots who thought that paying for type ratings, uniforms, jackets, bidding software was OK. Are you really surprised that any reasonable movement towards industry standard is met with 84% yes vote? I'm not.

I'm happy that you saw the light. Now stop disparaging your SWAPA brothers and sisters and perhaps lead the way and keep showing the history of this place so we don't repeat the past mistakes... who knows, maybe we'll just get that industry-leading contract while you're still here.

full of luv

That was so 2017.... I thank Microsoft every day for despite being a "high value corporate customer" deciding to stop making the surface as a tablet style IPAD style computer (combined with Jeppesen deciding to quit supporting non-ipad based charting system) forcing Delta to transition over to the IPAD with the rest of the aviation world.

SlipKid

LOL... You're really stretching now....

As I said earlier, you just had to have it, you didn't have to buy it. They didn't care or even ask how I got it or any of my other types for that matter.

IIRC, it was originally an insurance thing.

Yeah, it would've been much smarter for me to keep waiting a few (more) years until the legacies started hiring again, and subsequently gotten furloughed for 10 years instead of riding out the lost decade in the left seat of a 737 at SW. Would that have made me a "career defender"?

I conditioned them? You're a hoot man.

No prouder than I was paying for my own college, private, instrument, commercial, multi, ATP etc. as I was moving up the career ladder.

Should I have been a true "career defender", and waited around for someone else to pay for those too?

And of course I would've done it sooner! I'd love to have gotten out of the regionals sooner, and had never done the night freight gig at all, not to mention I'd be in the top 3-4% vs. 7%. You do understand the basic tenets of seniority, right?

Be honest. If, knowing what you know now, you could go back 25 years, pay for your type to satisfy a hiring requirement at the only airline that was hiring, and would now be sitting in the top 7% at SW, would you?

If you say no, you're lying.

I am not following your logic.

I have ALWAYS wanted an industry leading contract, and have been fighting for one for most of my time here.

I don't deserve an industry leading contract because I paid for a type rating, in order to score an interview at the only major airline hiring at the time, along with most of my other ratings, 25+ years ago?

Did you pay for any of your training in your career, including college? If so, then by your logic, you don't deserve an industry leading contract either.

All companies do that, regardless of whether their pilots had their types prior to being hired or not. We're just amongst the best pilot group when it comes to shutting up and coloring.

I am not surprised at the TA2 vote. I am surprised that you think I might've been.

This is the same pilot group that in 2012, overwhelmingly voted yes for the concession ridden 2009 contract, as well as it's 17 concessionary side letters, every one of which has cost us QOL, money and/or section 6 leverage. There is long history of giving away the store prior to that too.

I was surprised that only 38% of you voted yes for the latest TA1.

That was a solid, old school SWApA "negotiated", 50%+1 contract, that typically would've garnered at least an 80%+ yes vote.

This pilot group has ratified so many turds over the years, most of them costing us big $$ and QOL, that our latest industry lagging contract is a home run, by comparison. Of course it passed.

I did?

I've always thought that the type requirement was stupid, which is why I delayed getting it for a few years. I also think that the 4 year degree requirement (for most airlines) is even more inane.

LOL... I'll stop disparaging you guys when you stop making the same dumb mistakes.

Oh, and I've been "leading the way" around here for over 2 decades.

The vast majority of this group is lazy and apathetic when it comes to contract and union stuff.

Ironically, like you, most of this group is willing to bust their butts working extra on their days off to make up for our industry lagging contract, but won't take the time to educate themselves about stuff that might actually alleviate the need to work so hard, if they'd only vote no once in a while.

Some things never change.

FWIW, I think that once the kool aid finally wears off, and you've witnessed this pilot group in action a few more times, you'll start seeing the light.

SlipKid

I made a mistake in the last post. We voted on the 2006 contract in 2009. We voted on some concessionary side letters to said contract in 2012.