Originally Posted by Lewbronski

Can't resist this. Go to DL. At the end of 30 years, under their current contract, you will be $2.5M ahead of where you would be at SWA in terms of total career compensation if you upgrade early. AND, you will be $1M ahead in terms of retirement contributions. That's on their soon-to-be-old contract. The difference is only going to become more pronounced with their new contract.

Doing some quick math, if you upgrade to the 75/76 at DL at five months, as some people are, then upgrade to the 7ER at 8 years, you will make roughly $10.65M in compensation over 30 years. At SWA, after an 8-yr upgrade, you'll make about $8.11M. That's just pay, not per diem, or other ancillary sorts of compensation. That's assuming crediting an average of 90 hr/mo at DL and 100 TFP/mo at SWA.

If you go to SWA, you're kinda saying it's worth a $3.5M hit to your net worth. Or, you could look at it like saying SWA is so much better of a place to fly for that it's worth you donating $3.5M to the company.