Originally Posted by
FLY6584
While I agree, I feel that commuting to work with Delta will be far tougher than driving to work with Southwest regardless of the flying I do.
Don't get me wrong I'd love to fly 9-12 days a month on a 777 out of ATL with all weekends off, but after running the numbers I've realized that would make up a very small part of my career. If I'm going to primarily be on narrow bodies most of my career I assume just stay with Southwest and drive to work.
I flew MD-11's internationally before Southwest and while it was fun at first the novelty eventually wore off. I love flying 2-3 legs a day at Southwest on 3-day weekday trips, but to each their own.
The amount of good advice I got as a young man that I ignored is sometimes painful to think about. That being said I am going to be harsh in an attempt make this point stick a little better than it has as I know others have already hinted around this same idea.
Airline history is replete with unforeseen shifts. Do you think someone hired at Pan Am in the '60s could ever imagine being out of a job 20 years later? What about TWA, Braniff, and Eastern. When I got hired at United we had 8000 pilots. My class made A320 Captain in less than 2 years and the list grew to 12,000 pilots, but then by 2005 the best I could hold was 76FO.
All that and you're basing a career decision on the long term hope MCO will remain a base!!
That should be one of the last considerations you have as a pilot.
Also, take a look at the history of airline cost structure and think long and hard about SWA. New airlines benefit greatly from young, cheap labor and new planes with low maintenance costs. SWA is a fabulously managed corporation, but no amount of intelligent management can change the fact that the labor force is aging and so is the fleet. In other words SWA is about to enter the world of "legacy" costs. Will SWA weather this aging process better than previous legacies? I have no idea, but picking and airline based on living in MCO and hoping you will fly out of there is ludicrous.
At this very moment in time there is tremendous movement everywhere due to retirements so from that aspect, I think it is safe to say no matter where you go you will move fast relative to people in this industry hired during a lull.
Finally, you can not know how you will feel in 20 years, but if human nature is any guide you may find that when you are 50 and have been flying a 737 for 25 years and your kids are grown and gone and you have 15 or even 20 years left you may find you were wishing you had a choice of more than just one type of plane and a choice of destinations more than just US cities and maybe it would be nice to do a year or two of Rome, Tokyo, London, and Hong Kong.
Don't choose which airline to work for based on a domicile; you will more than likely be disappointed in decades to come.