In hindsight…. Southwest without any hesitation. Flown with plenty of guys furloughed from United after 9/11 who then would have gotten the shaft again in 2007. Yet, in 2000 and even in 2001, people were leaving Southwest to go to United.

Going forward? United seems to be a better choice with much quicker upgrades and movements due to retirements. But there’s that unknown factor.

But then again, if I could predict the future, I certainly wouldn’t be an airline pilot.

We live in a different era. Pre-Covid, I would tell you that one of the biggest selling points of Southwest was never having furloughed. During Covid, our management burned that record, backed up over it, and stomped on it again by sending WARN Act notices to 1221 pilots 120 days before any furlough was supposed to take effect and all to insert a force majeur clause in our contract and pretend we were gonna save the airline by taking a 10% paycut.

With this maneuver and series of incompetent decisions, Southwest has made itself no different than any other legacy airline with a few notable exceptions:

- We fly one type of airplane and we aren’t doubling in size anytime soon.

- We have a relatively young pilot group which means our retirements are minimal… or to borrow our management’s word… “flattish”

Based on those two factors, your career progression will suffer because upgrade will take a decade or longer.

You’ll see in W2 threads that Southwest pilots can and do make a lot. It comes at an expense of QOL and it gets to be long term. Also, Southwest has many bases that you can get into….

Money in the bank (Southwest) doesn’t mean anything if we have another major event like the MAX grounding. Bottom line…. Roll the dice and enjoy the ride.