Sink r8

OK, thanks for clarifying that. To be sure I understand: if an individual leg is over by some period of time, you get a corresponding increase for that specific leg? So in effect, you're paid by the minute, scheduled or actual, whichever is greater?

Don't forget that I wrote: "...We don't pay by the trip, and to my knowledge noone else does. I tend to think that, over time, something happened, maybe something as innocuous as your pay system discouraging taking the flight beyond block, maybe something else, led to a different outlook on speed of execution..."

If you're doing everything fast, maybe the cause isn't an economic incentive. Maybe it's something else. I assumed it was the pay system, but there may be other causes. For example, how long do you take to turn a 737? And how many legs do you normally fly? As Rolf said, you guys spend more time near the ground. Would it be fair to say that if you're late inbound on one leg, the next leg will depart late, and probably all others that day?

Or am I just plain wrong, and you guys work at the same speed as everyone else?

80ktsClamp

Each time someone accuses Southwest of having a hurried way of doing things in their culture, Herb disembowels a kitten.

Please, think of the kittens.

OscartheGrouch

Absolutely perfect 80 kt's. We should all be about the kittens instead of an old thread that was somehow reincarnated so S8 would have another thing to complain about little 'ol SWA. I have been around too long and remember every accident that every airline has had. Including the one S8 works for.

The Oscar

P.S. I have had new check airmen accuse me of taxiing too fast but not have the cajones to then tell me at the time. Last month I had an FO tell me I taxi too slow. You can't win.

Sink r8

Hi Oscar,

I think I pretty much only have two things I don't like about SW: the speed, and the preferential treatment by ATC. I've been pretty consistent on that. The kittens, I can live with. There are plenty of areas where you guys do very well. I don't commute, but I understand you guys normallt treat everyone very well, and I hope you find the same treatment in return.

As for the thread being reincarnated artificially, the flap overspeed, the speedbrake, and the checklist were all news. I check in once in a while at the IHSWA thread, just to stay current, but otherwise, I'm not really sitting here trying to find ways to villify you.

I'm still looking for someone that isn't trying to speak about SWA in terms of SWA, instead of terms of DAL being just as bad and Sink r8 being an a$$. Let's talk about you. Please correct me if I'm wrong: are you guys in the habit of doing everything faster, or is it my imagination?

OscartheGrouch

Hey S8,

I can tell you that safety has always been stressed in our training. Have some of our folks made mistakes? Absolutely! We do think that things can be done safely and quickly. Just a different way of thinking I suppose. I personally won't be looking for the next incident to point a finger at others though. Knowing that it WILL probably happen and hoping it is not me.

Just saying!

The Oscar

moosedawg

I'm trying to come to terms with the phrase "we do everything fast". I will admit that we taxi a little faster than others but we do have a thirty knot limit in place. Everything else we do is now predicated on the FMC directed speeds which are dependent on the winds, and all our current descents are 261 knots except when directed to fly faster by ATC. On the arrival and approach in question here, it appears the crew got task saturated and got behind the aircraft on the final approach and missed the before landing checklist. RNAV RNP approaches were pretty new to us when this mishap occurred, and it's not surprising they were fast because at the time we were all relearning how to manage our energy based on the speeds the FMC was calling for at certain waypoints. You can't say the were purposely fast unless they were in speed intervention and had set a higher speed in the MCP than was called for in the FMC. That was not mentioned in the article so we don't know. What I know for certain is that as a pilot group and Company have made a concerted effort over the last five years to slow down. Do we still have guys that push the field and get steeper than desired? True dat, but our FDAP data identifies when and where these occurrences happen and we are educated about it. I just don't see the do it fast culture you are referring to. Lately, it's been ATC pushing us to fly faster on approaches, seems like everywhere I go they want 170 knots or greater to five mile final.

1Seat 1Engine

This is stupid. SinkR8 will not be satisfied until we all move at exactly the same speed.

Since it's impossible, it follows that some of us will be faster and some slower.

SinkR8 is used to a certain speed that works for him and therefor thinks that anything faster is improper.

Realistically, we're all very close to the mean. But someone will always be faster and someone will always be slower...just the way it is man.

LuvJockey

Just out of curiosity, does any other airline invest the time and money towards the improved safety of the Flight Data Analysis Program?

Sink r8

Fine with me. I said I hope this remains an academc discussion. Considering the "training" most of us get nowadays, I am anot suggesting the next one couldn't be us, or any other airline.

Sink r8

Thanks for a coherent answer.

It occurs to me that FOQA is slowly but surely tightening the envelope everywhere, and the type of behavior I was attributing to you, is being stamped out industry-wide. My ideas about SWA were formulated partly when I was flying a 737-200. Those airplanes, and the ones you had at the time, didn't snitch.

So it's entirely possible that SW F/O's that are new enough, having working only under big brother's watchful eyes, think I'm out of my mind.

At the end of the day, "FOQA is eliminating the outliers", or "we learned a lot since BUR and MDW", or some other explanation would have worked for me. I don't have to win this debate, I just found it frustrating that I saw zero sign of contrition, little evidence of learning from past mistakes, but a lot "you suck too", and "it wasn't me" instead.

One interesting detail about your post, we almost never fly the VNAV speeds at a low cost index on the 737, at least not as of four years ago. Our procedure calls for either increasing the cost index, or setting a speed manually. I think most guys used 280-300 KTS.

Maybe we're reckless?