Originally Posted by
gloopy
Not just the pilots though, but everyone. I had heard the reason SWA went to hot and heavy into hedges when they did was because the pilots just got their "fat" contract and all the other labor groups were up to bat squeling "me too! me too!" as they always do so they sunk a ton of money to hide it from labor into what they believed were going to be cost neutral hedges with relatively little downside. Then the world collapsed under everyone else who wasn't uber hedged, they looked like geniuses and figured while they were at it, a legacy liquidation or two would be good for their bottom line so they started gutting the entire industry and growing like a virus. Or kudzu. Or kudzu with a virus.
The Pilots at SW never really got a fat contract. The mechanics, gate agents and flight attendants were all paid near top industry rates. The pilots were not. The SWAPA contract you refer to brought the pilots up to about 20 percent below the going rates at UAL, Delta, USAIR. Their contract became fat only because management hit the lottery with the fuel hedges and used those hedges to put everyone else into Chapter 11. Negotiating a contract 20 percent below what much of the rest of the industry is paying is rarely thought of as a fat contract.