5tools

Okay Proffessor can you tell us why SWA might being trying to manipulate the share price? I think it's plainly obvious to most.

Spesiellsporing

Welcome to the Big Suck fellas.

Fly90

I hope we come out of this in better shape than we are now, but I have my doubts. I see us shrinking significantly. If I was in the bottom 1000-2000 pilots I'd have a good backup plan. I could
be wrong. Will SWA be half of what it was in 10 years?

In all honesty. If you have less than 2-3 years here in property - is it even worth staying?

flyguy81

Not a lot of choices these days. UAL is hiring. DL is barely hiring. UPS is hiring. Or you can go to a regional.

Fly90

It has definitely slowed. Delta and UA still hiring ~1000/yr for now. How long it will last, I don't know.

PackFan1

How is that manipulation? They are literally returning money back to ALL investors. Taking cash off the books to do buybacks actually lowers the value of the company because it's value is decreasing. Sometimes companies don't have any profitable ventures to take on and/or no current room for growth, so they return the money to investors. Not manipulation, usually just responsible management. Now whether GK and BJ have led this company responsibly in other areas, that is an entirely different discussion in which I'm sure we'd agree.

Cyio

Agreed. It is the four horsemen of the airline pilot apocalypse right now.
1. Cost cutting.
2. Delayed orders
3. No hiring
4. Shrinkage

Hopefully, everyone is comfortable with their seniority level because, given the current information, not much is going to change for a couple of years. Thankfully, I am happy here and, at least for now, am in a manageable spot.

LAXtoDEN

He’s not going anywhere anyways and neither are you.

RJSAviator76

OK, now that everyone has gotten their inner Negative Nancy out, cried a river about stagnation, considered going to SkyWest as DEC... let's get back to reality.

We are stagnant with respect to number of airframes due to Washington DC stupidity and Boeing's troubles. Zero reason other than political johnson measuring that MAX 7 isn't certified... the damn thing was used to re-certify MAX 8 after the groundings. But whatever... it will eventually get certified. In fact, I think that's going to be the biggest spike in our stock price, and that's part of the reason why I think Elliott is here - to do some cleaning and enjoying the big spike when Boeing (and the FAA) get their act together.

However, we are NOT stagnant with respect to retirements because we haven't even hit our age 65 wave yet, nor have we hired ahead of it. Looking at myseniority.com, in 7 years, assuming 0% growth (not very likely) and only retention of the same number of pilots on the seniority list (again, not very likely), that's around 22-25% movement in just retirements. For someone hired post pandemic, that'll put them in the 7-9 years-on-the-property upgrade range which is within our norms. This is not accounting for any possible expansions or overlap.

As for ATL realignment... that's literally what it is. They're beefing up BNA. There are no furloughs or downgrades, just realignment of crews and movement to more lucrative markets. It's all been explained via the company channels.

Put away the SkyWest DEC application, you're fine.

WHACKMASTER

“It shrinks? I don’t know how you guys live with those things.”