1,221 Reasons Not to work for Southwest
07-23-2023, 07:16 AM
#851
Gets Weekends Off
Joined APC: Aug 2015
Posts: 641
Completely false! All the tools are available in the current CBA, FOM, AOM.
Quit doing other people's jobs, quit releasing the brake early, quit accepting extensions without IMSAFE, and for the love of god quit allowing hot-a$$ cabins till 5 prior to push with all the crappy ground-air facilities!! Just because the hose is attached doesn't mean the thing is sufficient!
Quit doing other people's jobs, quit releasing the brake early, quit accepting extensions without IMSAFE, and for the love of god quit allowing hot-a$$ cabins till 5 prior to push with all the crappy ground-air facilities!! Just because the hose is attached doesn't mean the thing is sufficient!
07-23-2023, 08:22 AM
#852
Gets Weekends Off
Joined APC: Jun 2010
Position: DOWNGRADE COMPLETE: Thanks Gary. Thanks SWAPA.
Posts: 6,783
07-23-2023, 04:31 PM
#854
Gets Weekends Off
Joined APC: Apr 2022
Posts: 239
Meanwhile at SWA...Hot Carl pulls agreed AIP sections to punish mothers.
https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/...atching-united
https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/...atching-united
07-24-2023, 01:25 AM
#855
Gets Weekends Off
Joined APC: Apr 2022
Posts: 239
This Article should concern every one of us. Please take the time to read.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/noahbar...d=IwAR2hhh7Bs7
https://www.forbes.com/sites/noahbar...d=IwAR2hhh7Bs7
07-24-2023, 03:06 AM
#856
Gets Weekends Off
Joined APC: Jun 2010
Position: DOWNGRADE COMPLETE: Thanks Gary. Thanks SWAPA.
Posts: 6,783
This Article should concern every one of us. Please take the time to read.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/noahbar...d=IwAR2hhh7Bs7
https://www.forbes.com/sites/noahbar...d=IwAR2hhh7Bs7
🔥👇
07-24-2023, 03:58 AM
#857
Gets Weekend Reserve
Joined APC: Jul 2007
Posts: 3,764
This Article should concern every one of us. Please take the time to read.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/noahbar...d=IwAR2hhh7Bs7
https://www.forbes.com/sites/noahbar...d=IwAR2hhh7Bs7
07-24-2023, 05:15 PM
#858
Gets Weekends Off
Thread Starter
Joined APC: Nov 2021
Posts: 202
Bob/Andrew,
I just finished up a recommendation letter for an amazing individual. Military (F-18E/F and F-16N, instructor, maintenance officer, multiple leadership positions), Part 121 experience in the 737, and a great guy! But there is a new twist. I’m writing recommendation letters for my FOs that want to leave SWA. This particular one is updating his United application after reading their TA. I know we are content here at SWA to drag contracts on as long as we always have, meet a few days a week here and there, and seemingly leave one of the most significant contracts in our airlines history to languish at a pace commensurate to American Airlines taxi speeds. All while upper management at SWA feigns little interest in getting involved personally which translates to the pilot cadre as apathetic indifference. Im not here to second guess the reasoning why extended negotiations is beneficial to the company nor to express an alternative solution.
I simply want you to know that I came to Southwest, in the Herb days, to fulfill a dream, fly for my dream company, and never have to call work “work”. It was good for many years. As leadership changed and the focus shifted from Herbs vision to a distinctly different corporate direction shifting from where employees felt that Southwest was like “Cheers”, where everyone knew your name, to our new identity as a line item on a balance sheet with the interests of investors placed over the interests of employees. We all feel this way. Ground ops, Flight Attendants, Provo, Pilots, Maintenance….I talk to them all daily. The collectivism and cohesiveness of the employees of a once great airline has evaporated like our profit sharing after the meltdown.
As an airline we owe it to ourselves, as employees, to hire the best qualified and most experienced individuals to support the ultimate success of our airline. We are doing the opposite.
The airlines have long had a deep pool of pilot applicants from which to choose for the past several decades. Pilots flocked to the old Southwest like weed smokers to a Willy Nelson concert. We had the luxury of top tier applicants which filled our pilot ranks with amazing men and women. They didn’t care that they would never fly a 777, overnight in Europe, make wide body pay for the last 20 years of their career, or make millions more in career earnings. It was the people. A night at the Mail Sail would nullify any pilots trepidation or hesitation that they were absolutely working with the best group of pilots ever assembled. The combination of a great work group and Herbs leadership had us all committed to a long term relationship with the best place to work ever. We sold Southwest to our friends, bought stock, and envied no other airline pilot.
Those days are gone. I’m not sure how or when exactly they disappeared, but the New Southwest, like “New Coke”, might not be the answer to the longevity of the airline nor Herbs legacy. I say this all to simply put perspective to our current predicament. We no longer are what we used to be. We no longer can attract a viable applicant base to secure the future of our airline. We have disenfranchised the pilot group, discouraged pilot applicants, and normalized pilot attrition as a “cost of doing business”. We removed the 4 year degree requirement and then the 737 type requirement. As numbers fell we removed the 1,000 hours of Turbine PIC requirement. Then we dropped the 1,000 PIC Captain/Aircraft Commander requirement entirely to be simply 1,000 hours in a turbine aircraft. As the numbers fell even further it became 500 turbine, but we added the “preferred” caveat so we could expand the applicant base even further. We did all of this without any self reflection as to “why” other airlines became the destination of a dwindling number of qualified pilots. The interview team is doing a great job filtering through the “new applicant base”, but what they have to work with is a great conversation over a few beers. A history of many failed checkrides, dressing for an interview like it’s casual day, no logbooks, and it goes on.
The combination of a deterioration of the culture at Southwest combined with competition with our peer airlines and their new labor agreements has left us where we are today. My friends no longer want to apply, my peers want to leave, my co-workers are not happy, and my FOs want recommendation letters so they can go somewhere else.
I have a few questions if you have time for a response. I know you are briefed on how many pilots are leaving after training. I would like to know:
1. By what percent has our applicant pool fallen in the past 5 years?
2. How many pilots that have applied, when reached, decline an interview?
3. How many pilots when offered an interview, show up to the scheduled interview?
4. How many pilots when given a CJO, decline employment?
5. How many pilots given a class date don’t show up for class?
6. How much lower do we need to lower our hiring qualifications before we consider it a safety risk?
7. Is our insurance carrier aware of or even interested in the additional risk of a significant loss that may result from decreased hiring minimums?
50% of airline pilots in the United States are over age 50. This large group will be gone in 15 years. 60 to 80 percent of flight school students that start a professional pilot program never obtain a commercial certificate. The pilot shortage is just beginning and programs like 225, while a start, will produce only a small fraction of the pilots we need. Our applicant pool should be the other airlines!
We need to step up and make this airline back into what it once was. We need a cadre of mid level management that can face a cold hard reality and boldly move to change direction. Dallas needs to realize that the reality of the true Southwest is not Spirt Parties and power point metrics. Talk to a pilot at 3am after her 14 hour duty day, or the guy that got re-routed or JA’d and missed his kids graduation, or the pilot that bids a vacation in Sept of 2022 for the next Aug but then has to cancel a family trip because his training was “moved up a month”. Go down to the ramp and sit with a maintenance technician on hour 14 of a 16 hour shift. Or a ramp lead short 8 agents, or an ops agent with IT problems trying to board, or a customer we crushed because security was backed up but we just had to make Dallas’ EMO metric even with a planned 10 min under fly. Let’s get back to trusting our employees to do the right thing, live by the golden rule, and lead from the trenches and not the GO. I don’t want to spend my few remaining years writing recommendations to FOs that want to leave. Let’s bring back what Herb left us.
Regards,
I just finished up a recommendation letter for an amazing individual. Military (F-18E/F and F-16N, instructor, maintenance officer, multiple leadership positions), Part 121 experience in the 737, and a great guy! But there is a new twist. I’m writing recommendation letters for my FOs that want to leave SWA. This particular one is updating his United application after reading their TA. I know we are content here at SWA to drag contracts on as long as we always have, meet a few days a week here and there, and seemingly leave one of the most significant contracts in our airlines history to languish at a pace commensurate to American Airlines taxi speeds. All while upper management at SWA feigns little interest in getting involved personally which translates to the pilot cadre as apathetic indifference. Im not here to second guess the reasoning why extended negotiations is beneficial to the company nor to express an alternative solution.
I simply want you to know that I came to Southwest, in the Herb days, to fulfill a dream, fly for my dream company, and never have to call work “work”. It was good for many years. As leadership changed and the focus shifted from Herbs vision to a distinctly different corporate direction shifting from where employees felt that Southwest was like “Cheers”, where everyone knew your name, to our new identity as a line item on a balance sheet with the interests of investors placed over the interests of employees. We all feel this way. Ground ops, Flight Attendants, Provo, Pilots, Maintenance….I talk to them all daily. The collectivism and cohesiveness of the employees of a once great airline has evaporated like our profit sharing after the meltdown.
As an airline we owe it to ourselves, as employees, to hire the best qualified and most experienced individuals to support the ultimate success of our airline. We are doing the opposite.
The airlines have long had a deep pool of pilot applicants from which to choose for the past several decades. Pilots flocked to the old Southwest like weed smokers to a Willy Nelson concert. We had the luxury of top tier applicants which filled our pilot ranks with amazing men and women. They didn’t care that they would never fly a 777, overnight in Europe, make wide body pay for the last 20 years of their career, or make millions more in career earnings. It was the people. A night at the Mail Sail would nullify any pilots trepidation or hesitation that they were absolutely working with the best group of pilots ever assembled. The combination of a great work group and Herbs leadership had us all committed to a long term relationship with the best place to work ever. We sold Southwest to our friends, bought stock, and envied no other airline pilot.
Those days are gone. I’m not sure how or when exactly they disappeared, but the New Southwest, like “New Coke”, might not be the answer to the longevity of the airline nor Herbs legacy. I say this all to simply put perspective to our current predicament. We no longer are what we used to be. We no longer can attract a viable applicant base to secure the future of our airline. We have disenfranchised the pilot group, discouraged pilot applicants, and normalized pilot attrition as a “cost of doing business”. We removed the 4 year degree requirement and then the 737 type requirement. As numbers fell we removed the 1,000 hours of Turbine PIC requirement. Then we dropped the 1,000 PIC Captain/Aircraft Commander requirement entirely to be simply 1,000 hours in a turbine aircraft. As the numbers fell even further it became 500 turbine, but we added the “preferred” caveat so we could expand the applicant base even further. We did all of this without any self reflection as to “why” other airlines became the destination of a dwindling number of qualified pilots. The interview team is doing a great job filtering through the “new applicant base”, but what they have to work with is a great conversation over a few beers. A history of many failed checkrides, dressing for an interview like it’s casual day, no logbooks, and it goes on.
The combination of a deterioration of the culture at Southwest combined with competition with our peer airlines and their new labor agreements has left us where we are today. My friends no longer want to apply, my peers want to leave, my co-workers are not happy, and my FOs want recommendation letters so they can go somewhere else.
I have a few questions if you have time for a response. I know you are briefed on how many pilots are leaving after training. I would like to know:
1. By what percent has our applicant pool fallen in the past 5 years?
2. How many pilots that have applied, when reached, decline an interview?
3. How many pilots when offered an interview, show up to the scheduled interview?
4. How many pilots when given a CJO, decline employment?
5. How many pilots given a class date don’t show up for class?
6. How much lower do we need to lower our hiring qualifications before we consider it a safety risk?
7. Is our insurance carrier aware of or even interested in the additional risk of a significant loss that may result from decreased hiring minimums?
50% of airline pilots in the United States are over age 50. This large group will be gone in 15 years. 60 to 80 percent of flight school students that start a professional pilot program never obtain a commercial certificate. The pilot shortage is just beginning and programs like 225, while a start, will produce only a small fraction of the pilots we need. Our applicant pool should be the other airlines!
We need to step up and make this airline back into what it once was. We need a cadre of mid level management that can face a cold hard reality and boldly move to change direction. Dallas needs to realize that the reality of the true Southwest is not Spirt Parties and power point metrics. Talk to a pilot at 3am after her 14 hour duty day, or the guy that got re-routed or JA’d and missed his kids graduation, or the pilot that bids a vacation in Sept of 2022 for the next Aug but then has to cancel a family trip because his training was “moved up a month”. Go down to the ramp and sit with a maintenance technician on hour 14 of a 16 hour shift. Or a ramp lead short 8 agents, or an ops agent with IT problems trying to board, or a customer we crushed because security was backed up but we just had to make Dallas’ EMO metric even with a planned 10 min under fly. Let’s get back to trusting our employees to do the right thing, live by the golden rule, and lead from the trenches and not the GO. I don’t want to spend my few remaining years writing recommendations to FOs that want to leave. Let’s bring back what Herb left us.
Regards,
07-29-2023, 11:13 AM
#860
Gets Weekends Off
Thread Starter
Joined APC: Nov 2021
Posts: 202
Southwest Airlines Stock Plunges 16% in 16 Days!
https://www.fool.com/investing/2023/...sYE9ua-gspT-pc
It’s such sweet irony that SWA put shareholders before everything else, and these very shareholders are the first to turn their backs on the C-suite when its performance doesn’t suit their needs. Meanwhile, the frontline employees who have been forsaken continue to plug away day after day and How are those dividends and buy backs working out? Sure glad they're saving money with ancient tech, and ripping off the employees, it's really paying off
https://www.fool.com/investing/2023/...sYE9ua-gspT-pc
It’s such sweet irony that SWA put shareholders before everything else, and these very shareholders are the first to turn their backs on the C-suite when its performance doesn’t suit their needs. Meanwhile, the frontline employees who have been forsaken continue to plug away day after day and How are those dividends and buy backs working out? Sure glad they're saving money with ancient tech, and ripping off the employees, it's really paying off
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