Originally Posted by DownAndDirty

I'll add another worthless data point.

I was standing at the gate a few weeks ago, waiting for the jet to pull up to the gate, and a guy comes up to me to ask if I'm the pilot for the outgoing flight. I told him yeah and we start chatting. Turns out he's a 62-year old CA at AA commuting home to LAS. We start talking about airlines, applications, pilot shortage, etc, and I told him that I was between SW and AA and received CJOs from both, but chose SW. He told me I made the right decision and he wishes he would have done the same when he started. He called AA a "glorified regional" right now. Was he bitter? Probably. Does his opinion matter? Debatable. But I've never had someone at another airline point blank tell me I made the right decision going with another airline.

Yes, I realize every airline has this guy, and every airline has its pros and cons. This is just a random data point that I thought was interesting.