wndriver

Friends at other airlines are surprised to see our flexibility of moving our trips and picking up trips out of any bases. I fly 5 leg day maybe once a year or every two years. You hear about Captains make 500K+/year, not working too many days, but on computer a lot. People you work with are very nice at Southwest. My friend at UA said pilots don't speak to FAs. Our technologies are old and meltdowns are very painful. The contract will only get better at Southwest and significantly less chance of getting laid off than UA. Having a lot of bases will give you options if you want to move your family.

You have to think about the things that will not change at Southwest. I wouldn't even worry about the contract. You will only fly the 737s and maybe one more plane before you retire. We have a lot of cash but they never want to have quality things. Meltdowns will still happen either because of IT or due to the way we route our planes.

Zard

one more pro for submitting my United app.

Otterbox

It’s not that UAL pilots don’t speak to FAs, they just don’t usually get all wrapped up in their drama on the overnights… don’t really care about the person in 32B rolling their eyes at the FA, or the FAs girlfriend/boyfriend/baby/babymama drama… being away from them off the airplane means you don’t have to even pretend to care.

Still want to get laid? Don’t have a **** personality and fire up tinder/hinge/bumble/Grindr/Christian mingle/farmers only/onlyfans… or meet someone at a bar.

Nucflash

1) Not true
2) People suuuuuuure have strange rationale to justify where they’ve chosen to go to work.

wndriver

OK. It may not be true for you, but it's true for my friend. He flew 737s and whatever that goes to Asia. He's been there 15+ years.

Some people leave WN to go to UA. One guy, he left WN for UA, then came back to WN because he didn't like UA. Some leave WN for DL with no regrets, and I have flown with FOs who came from DL, had job offers from DL and WN and chose WN, or his Dad retired from DL and still chose WN over DL. Good luck to them all. It must be nice to have so many options. You never know if you made the right choice until you retire. Good luck.

fcrx

Just do yourself a giant favor and skip WN altogether. This place is a Cracker Jack regional that flies 737’s

calmemployment

Southwest is the airline in the only airline in the free world that makes pilots wait until all pax are off. You see at Southwest when you are done flying for the day you have to wait 20 min sometimes more for the next crew because we have one van to the hotel for the whole crew but we have throughs onboard so the FAs have to wait and thus so do the pilots.

At United the pilots can leave right away. United FA's are allowed to use the aft Emergency Exit light switch if they need it, and check the girt bars.

There is a reason Boeing and Airbus have Emergency exit light switches in the aft galley. It is so the pilots can leave without babysitting the airplane. The United's FOM specifically says to turn off the emergency exit light switch as you exit the aircraft, even with pax.

RJSAviator76

I can just see CK taking your post and telling our NC "Why should a 'Cracker Jack regional that flies 737's' ever give you industry leading anything? Given that you clearly don't see us as industry leaders in anything, what makes you entitled to anything industry-leading? Here's your 'Cracker Jack regional that flies 737's' offer."

I take a different perspective... I consider us an industry leader and a 1000 lbs gorilla in the industry. I expect to be compensated as such.

dsevo

Just because you consider it doesn’t make it so.

Lewbronski

IMO, it doesn't really matter if CK, or BJ, or TD think we don't deserve industry-leading anything when the company's main defense against the credible threat of self-help is the employment of scabs in the event of a legal strike. In this environment, the chances of SWA management drumming up enough scabs to fly enough flights to sustain our operation in response to a legal strike are virtually nil.

IMO, it also doesn't really matter that much if we believe we deserve an industry-leading contract unless we are able to collectively make the threat of a strike very, very real in the minds of CK, BJ, and GK.

If we can make the threat of a legal strike very, very credible, then we stand a good chance of attaining an industry-leading contract.

The very late filing for mediation and the ongoing complaining (which management is very aware of) from much of the pilot group about how long the process is taking, among other things, eats away at our credibility. It makes it appear to management, who does understand the process, that we do not understand the process very well and that they can eventually cause us to settle for something much less than we could achieve.