ZapBrannigan

(Wrote something really snarky and added nothing to the conversation. My wife told me I was an A-hole so I deleted it.)

galaxy flyer

Zap,

Do you believe everything she says?

GF

Tom fooloery

Anyone know how many classes are they going to run a month until the summer slow down?

Tankerhead

Doesn't matter when he leaves for less-brown pastures.

Tankerhead

Or browner pastures😎

oldcarpilot

3 and hearing there may not be much of a slow down.

TexasFlight

Im on reserve and have been used every day of this supposedly slow month(not complaining, its quite lucrative). Based on the amount of premium being awarded I would say other reserves are experiencing the same thing. Trying to figure out if this is just normal SWA living on the edge staffing wise, or we are really short. If its the latter then I would expect classes to continue through the summer.

RJSAviator76

It has to do with how Southwest uses reserves. At other airlines, reserves are used to cover sick or irregular ops. Here, they're used to cover any open time flying they don't want to pay premium for and no one picks it up at straight time extra fly.

This place also runs on greed which ends up being mutually beneficial both for the company and for the pilots:

The pilots want to pad their checks as much as possible. That's why it's not unusual to see captains approaching or exceeding 500k a year especially now with the new contract and FO's in 200-300k range. Hell, first year guys can easily break 100k with minimal OT and if you hustle, you can make mid-100's, but you'll work a lot to make that your first year.

The company loves it because it's still cheaper than having a ton of extra bodies on the property not being productive.

In my newhire class, both SWAPA and company people told us that to cover our schedule using legacy ways, we would need 2500 more pilots on the property to just cover our current schedule with no additional flying or aircraft.

That's why reserves here will usually fly a lot.

e6bpilot

What RJS said is right about reserve utilization.
We are also undermanned for the amount of flying we do. Any time there is a disruption, the airline depends on open time flyers to fill the gap. They don't normally utilize reserves for emergency short notice stuff.
I have also noticed that since the contract was settled, there have been less senior guys picking up open time, at least on the FO side. Look at the open time awards on any given weekend. There are six digit guys flying fat premium trips. In February. Premium in February was unheard of two years ago and would go extremely senior if it existed at all.
I predict Spring Break is going to be madness. I don't even want to think about this summer.

WHACKMASTER

$$$$$$$$$