KC10 FATboy

Dang Spanky, where did this angst come from? Nobody here was saying anything negative until your outburst. It is very easy to get cocky when times are good. But as history has shown, even the biggest and best can falter.

I like Southwest as they have proven to be a successful airline. You can't argue that. However, lets take a closer look.

Southwest is a domestic airline. They fly high frequency, high demand routes. They clip the low hanging fruit from the legacy's and as such, have consistently taken domestic market share.

Lets call a spade a spade. Legacy airlines are international airlines and everything about them is setup for that. Legacy's individually fly to more countries than Southwest flies to domestic locations. More over, they are one mode of the lifeblood of our country's transportation and delivery system, as they serve smaller markets that Southwest could never touch due to lower demand, lower frequency. There are entire states that Southwest doesn't even serve ... yet.

I work for a legacy, and yes my pay could be better but really I'm not that far off the pay scale of Southwest. In my experience, except for a rather very small few, employee morale is exceptionally high all things considered --- the pilots lost over 50% of pay and all of their retirement. And when I open the door and say goodbye to the passengers, they are very happy, saying thank yous and kudos. The only time I get a bad look or snicker from someone is when we're delayed almost always due to weather or ATC issues well beyond our control.

There are some very bad situations out there. This industry has changed dramatically over the past decade and it isn't going back. There are plenty of employee groups out there who pretty much are entitled to be bitter as they've been screwed royally. I hope a startup airline isn't allowed to move in, undercut everyone due to cheap wages and subsidization through fuel hedging or some other venture, and do the same to Southwest as Southwest was able to do to the legacies.

Ironically, as the legacy's are morphing more into a leaner machine that is like Southwest, Southwest is also becoming more like a legacy. We hear the grumbles from the employees who have access to internal company forums. We saw it play out here on APC when the pilot's TA was voted down, and the senior pilots were not happy with the junior pilots. We see Southwest holding on the ramp because the gate is blocked. We see you in line at Laguardia burning fuel just like us and so on.

Now that the fuel hedging profits are gone and everyone is back to a level playing field, the future looks very interesting and I suspect we will see a lot of fare wars as in the latest "no bag fee" campaign. Southwest built a powerhouse of a domestic airline by the use of brilliant fuel hedging, running a good airline, and convincing the passenger that they are always the cheapest -- but the latter isn't always the case. Passenger habits drove the legacies into alacart pricing and services.

Is Southwest's ad campagin working, probably.

ToiletDuck

I had to bring this back because the commercials they've been running all day during my NFL games have had me laughing like crazy lol. Humor always works! Seriously I bet I've seen that commercial a dozen times between all the games on the NFL package and every time I'm laughing crazy!