No, no it doesn't.

Sixteen hours in a tin can just blows chow. Nothing about it is better. The paycheck used to be. But that's not even a sure thing anymore. On the triple fatigue isn't something you worry about from time to time when things get sketchy. Fatigue is your new life companion. It will be with you all the dam time. After a while you don't even notice it anymore, not because you have gotten immune to it, but because you have gotten numb to it. You're tired in the plane, you're tired on the layovers, you're tired when you get home. And when you do get home, your friends and family get tired of you being tired really quick. They're all sympathetic at first. They think its like jetlag from a weekend in Vegas back to the east coast. Three time zones? I wouldn't get up to pee in three time zones. You're doing at least 72 time zones, more on some trips. But they don't understand how you can still be tired a week after you got home from work. And you are still bone tired for weeks. Its actually very much like being an habitual drunk. You're hungover all the time. And a few days break isn't enough to detox your system. You need months of a normal human schedule before you really flush all the tired out of you.

There are positives at SAI, but the contract at Southern does not come close to compensating the crews for the far more difficult conditions they work under than domestic pax operators ever have to face.

Southern was a safe harbor in stormy seas for many of us. But the rest of the industry isn't stormy right now - so why go to the one place that is?