If you've been at Southwest Airlines for less than 5 years I think it might be worth looking into jumping ship to DAL, AA, UA, FedEx, UPS.
But who knows.....we had pilots at Southwest that left for United in 1999,2000,2001 and then became double furloughees -- once after 9/11, recalled in '06-07' only to be furloughed again in the 2008-2009 timeframe.
HUGE financial mistake for those guys.
Will history repeat itself again with guys jumping from Southwest to others only to get hosed by unforeseen events down the road?
What might those be you ask....
Maybe Southwest really does kill it in the international markets and not only expands there with narrow-bodies north and south but then buys their own wide bodies for east-west flying.
Maybe Congress hoses us all and allows changes to the rules regarding foreign carriers flying into and out of the US or rules regarding foreign ownership of airlines. Or maybe DAL, AA, UA continue to lose market share flying long haul international when competing against the Middle East carriers and actually try to shrink to profitability like they did in the past domestically and they lost market share to you guessed it - Southwest among others.
No crystal ball but the current dynamics of the industry can change very rapidly. Choose wisely......