Originally Posted by
sailingfun
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.
It was pretty fat for an uberlow LCC and it became insanely bloated compared to the soon BK legacies and other start ups popping up or expanding. It instantly thrust them to the pinnacle (no pun) of passenger pilot pay which needless to say was never the intention of their management. That 20% below suddenly becoming 30-40% above is a world rocker for any management team regardless of profitability and you can imagine how bolshevik other work groups would get at the thought of something like that. Other labor groups were up to bat next and as always were squealing "me too me too!" over the pilots dominant pay scale and percentage raises. It makes sense that they would have viewed sinking a bunch of money into hedges at those prices at that time as a low risk way to get cash off the table. They still couldn't cry "poor" but at least they could take some wind out of their sails. I really doubt they were actually predicting 147$ oil and were just acting rationally.