Hm, don't know what to think concerning this. Yes, SWA pilots don't get paid as much as the 15%+inflation per two years projection that the article mentions, but bear in mind that they also fly 73s (and 15% every two years?!). That being said, if you look at the REASONABLE projections as forecasted by Capt. Koch (the ones that took Consumer Price Index into account) and adjust them forward four years, and you'll find them pretty similar to the salaries earned by 12 year SWA Captains. Of course, not all CAs earn that much, but if you find ones that work their trips right, you can definitely find some that do. And I'd bet that Capt. Koch didn't decide to use what the slacker Captains were earning.

Now, I can't touch the 74 (or current day T7 numbers for comparison), but at least narrowbody salaries at the evil LCCs isn't criminally out of line for what the narrowbody norm was back then. There's no denying that salaries have come WAY down, but let's not start the infighting between fellow pilots at different carriers! It's not the pilots who asked for lower wages, and I wouldn't come close to calling any of the LCCs scab-airlines filled with SJS pilots who would fly for pennies just as long as it was a big jet.

The blame lies elsewhere, shared among the sense of entitlement that the entire American public has (I actually think this is the worst one), the greed of some top management (middle management ain't that bad), the rising price of oil, the general surplus of pilots, the fact that I wouldn't say the job is getting harder, the general lowering of upper-middleclass to lower class wages (while widening the gap to the elite), and a bevy of other reasons that each take their toll on pilots' (and others') salaries.