Originally Posted by
allesgut
Nobody is bashing Southwest… The guys are on here stating basically that they don’t want to Fly nothing but a 737 for their whole career and they want a variety of flying including the quality of life and pay that goes along with International wide body flying....
SWA is a low cost carrier. United is not. Both airlines have their warts, one just has their warts constantly highlighted.
Correct. Some people did bash Southwest and it was unnecessary and wrong.
The up and down hustle isn’t for everyone, and going “international” to Mexico City in an RJ ( or wherever you’re “way more international destinations than the legacies” locations were ) is nowehere near the same thing as flying a triple to Rome or Hong Kong.
A fair number of us here at Southwest came from overseas expat gigs. There are former EK, EY, CS 777 captains, FlyDubai 737 captains, BBJ captains, ACJ captains, Global captains, Gulfstream captains all formerly based overseas now flying at Southwest. In fact, that’s exactly why I chuckled when the word “prestige” was used in this thread. Without knowing our background, it’s rather shallow if not arrogant to make a presumption that somehow we don’t know what it’s like to fly into Rome or Hong Kong.
But hey, speaking for myself only... I’ve flown into FCO (and CIA across town) and HKG way more times than any place in Mexico (or Canada for that matter), and “followed the greens” in LHR and SIN way more times than I’ve flown into El Paso or Midland...
My point is, thanks to the Lost Decade, more and more folks in recent years came from more “exotic” jobs than before, so it’s not like we don’t know what we’re talking about, particularly when discussing the “cool” factor of international/long haul flying as well as offering our thoughts on the not-so-cool aspect of it which none of us has offered so far.
The two airlines are completely different animals.
Fully agreed. In the end, it boils down to individual preferences... money, lifestyle, equipment, etc. Both offer fantastic and lucrative careers, and for anyone having to decide between the two, it’s a great problem to have.