Originally Posted by Carl Spackler

With regard to your #3 above, fuel hedging on the part of SWA management had nothing to do with why their debt is low. SWA management did NOT buy an entire commuter airline for over a Billion dollars, only to purposely wreck it later. SWA did not spend many Billions on buying back their own stock, only to see it go to zero in bankruptcy. When you don't waste billions on incredibly stupid "investments", you don't go in to that kind of debt.

With regard to #4 above, SWA's single fleet model is not why they don't believe in outsourcing. Their entire corporate culture is the way Delta's used to be under David Garrett. Mr. Garrett would never in a million years have allowed the Delta brand to be entrusted to anyone other than a Delta employee. Herb Kelleher believed the exact same thing. Gary Kelly is still running SWA that way. These men believe that whatever is gained in cost by outsourcing to bottom feeders, is more than made up by the losses and inefficiencies produced by outsourcing to bottom feeders. It's just a mindset that men like Garrett and Kelly have/had. Our current management team couldn't disagree more. That's why I say that SWA and FDX should be the first choice by our next generation of pilots.

Carl