sMFer

I think he’s referring to our managements mindset, not his own opinion.

RJSAviator76

I wouldn't call it "extreme, absolute, unforgivable anger." Not at all. It's just business as GK puts it, and this time around, the masks came off. I actually find it simpler.

GK could have said: "no furloughs folks. You are all smart enough to know that we cannot use paycuts or concessions to make our way out of this, so we won't insult your intelligence by asking for them. We need revenue, so we're going on offense against weak carriers and we need all hands on deck. If a single major player folds during COViD-19, the rest will bounce back quickly, and that's in the current, distressed environment, let alone when things improve, which they inevitably will. We want to be able to seize on it all. Don't worry about overstaffing for now, we'll put you all to work. To be sure, we're bleeding like the rest of them, but this is when we are at our best. We'll be the last ones standing and we will win." and he likely would have even had Lewbronski fired up and rally behind him.

Instead, he chose to let FordHarrison put the final nail in SWA culture's coffin. He could have earned so much good will from all employee groups, the koolaid would be strong and the recruiting for all positions would be through the roof for time to come, it would have paid substantial dividends going forward, especially considering the pilots are back in Section 6 and most other groups are coming back up. Instead, he galvanized virtually all employee groups against him by his half-assed approach of depending on government cheese and rolling out a hand grenade on furloughs. Sorry GK, I'm not your "coHeart" or "Family". It's just business, and I'm your cost unit.

RJSAviator76

I believe Hawaiian furloughed too.

flyguy81

Sun Country didn’t furlough either. Knew I forgot some.

flensr

Me too... I'm a bit of both, sucker AND slacker. The 108TFP myth came from somewhere though.

flensr

Yea, that too

Although seriously if you ask a lot of our pilots about how to work the schedule, almost ALL of them are going to assume you want tips on how to add more to your schedule, not drop. My opinion is that it's a deliberate cultural bias thanks to HR hiring people who want to fly more. I could be wrong.

bay982

That’s the ‘unforgivable’ part that just feels like a bummer, so many pilots here saying that the culture is dead forever. SWA seemed like a more pleasant place to work because people believed in being positive and treating coworkers well, which, admittedly takes effort.

SWA undoubtedly screwed up furlough and concessions discussions. That sucks. It created a lot of worry when it was least needed. My only point is that at the end, unlike many others, they didn’t furlough & they didn’t force pay concessions. And that seems like it deserves at least 1% credit.

So many hours of ones life are spent at work I was just hoping that 1% credit might be enough to keep it a pleasant place to be. But maybe I’m taking the commentary here too literally, because I know a complaining pilot is a happy pilot.

hoover

I flew with a 4 digit cpt out of DAL once and made the comment to him with your senority you must get anything you want off. He looked right at me and said it's not about how many days off you can get it's about how many you can fly. He was 64 and working as hard as his senority let him.
I work with more people like this than not.

I also find it interesting when people say they only work min guarantee. I have never had a min guarantee month but I always strive for working fewer days than scheduled. If it's truly about time at home you can get more days off for the same pay as scheduled; usually. If it's about being lazy and not caring then it's an accurate statement. Which is totally cool as well.

flyguy81

Flew with a senior dude a few weeks back. Said he did a 155 avg in 2020. He was filling every retirement vehicle possible to try and retire early. With little kids I don’t have any desire to work that much but I’ve also got 25 years to go to 65 so I got time on my side...

flensr

My own preference is to bias my schedule to give me quality time with my family, then add as much flying around the family schedule as I reasonably can. I'll give up a 4-day for a turn or two, since it gives me more time at home to help my wife with the kids and I can usually make up the TFP difference with a pickup somewhere. It's been harder with covid of course but I flew enough extra Mar-Oct to let me slack off and credit only about 2/3 my schedule Nov - Dec and probably Jan as well. ETO isn't quite enough to get me through the month so I'm that guy who pretty much went to work for just 30 TFP, the difference between what I actually got and what I would have have gotten on ETO.

I'm lucky though, I work because I want to. We have enough saved that if we lived small and moved somewhere cheap I could quit tomorrow, buy a reasonable house with cash, and still put my kids through college. The money is all gravy but I'll never get more time with the kids so that's where my priority is now.