You sure about that? I don't remember them getting any huge pay increases back then. I always bought into the conventional wisdom that they were quite a bit behind us (prior to 9/11) in pay. But then again, the only thing I ever saw was the pay rates. That obviously doesn't tell the whole story with SWA and is actually quite misleading because of their TFP thing. I'm beginning to wonder if they were really all that far behind us back then.

Of course, that's really not all that important now. What IS important is that their average Captain makes over $230K/year and their average First Officer makes over $140K/year. When you compare a Delta MD-88/90 Captain averaging 75 hours per month on our current pay rates, you get an $83,000 per year deficit compared to an SWA Captain doing essentially the same kind of flying. For those of you in Rio Linda/Herndon... that's HUGE!