One of the rationalizations I’ve always heard at SWA is that it’s okay that our rates aren’t so good because we make more per day than places like Delta and thus, fly fewer days per month than the OAL’s.

A little while back I started a thread over on the Delta forum asking about average number of days worked per month. I was looking for objective data. But mostly I got a lot of subjective data: 99 replies so far.

The gist seems to be that they don’t really, on average, seem to fly more days per month than us. Of course, it varies with fleet type and like here, with seniority and with reserve status. But it seems like it’s mostly a myth that we really fly much less, in terms of days per month, than they do.

It would be great to get truly objective pilot-group-wide data on the question of days worked per month in order to truly settle the question. Unfortunately, the unions appear to keep a tight grip on that data.