Originally Posted by
Black Coffee
Denver has been one of our most successful cities in the history of Southwest Airlines, if not the most according to Gary Kelly. I think we hit 217 flights a day this month, and we have 820 pilots based in Denver. We add about 20 pilots a month on the vacancy awards. We are adding more gates on the east side of the C concourse and we would grow more if they could hire ground ops faster. We just passed over 1000 rampers and I think they need to hire 350 more. Denver is now a maintenance base for us and I wouldn't be surprised if Southwest doesn't buy or build a hanger. Denver flight ops says the base will be a mega station. Probably over 1000 pilots some time next year. We are flying full in and out of Denver constantly, AM's or PM's it doesn't matter.
I thought you would grow more quickly if you could only get more second and third year FO's to be willing to upgrade to Captain...oh wait wrong airline...