Originally Posted by
sherpster
Mr. Boat,
Thanks for the post on this subject. I am one of those guys asking about schedules. I appreciate the information. SWA, regardless of the schedules, is a great company.
You're welcome.
Zap is spot on about doing research on SWA scheduling practices. SWA is primarily a point to point airline and it's a single fleet airline of course also. These two characteristics provide for "efficiencies" that you can't imagine. Whether that's good or bad for Pilot QOL is a judgement call but certainly it's different from a hub and spoke, multi-fleet legacy. A prime example being AM/PM scheduling and consistent days of the week schedules. I.E. you'll fly every Mon-Wed or Fri-Sun etc.
Sorry for the thread creep (on a thread I started no less!) but it's worth mentioning that contract 2012 was a huge shift in the right direction on too many levels to elaborate on here. I believe contract 2020 will be another strong, positive shift. High aircraft and Pilot utilization is in the company's DNA but the work rules are slowly being modernized. Pay and retirement is way up also.
(Mr. Boat...Jaja. Me reía mucho de eso.)