A very dear friend just left SWA after almost 6 years on the property for Delta. He will most likely upgrade there before he would upgrade here.... and he was in the 70 percentile seniority here. He also wants to fly a wide body at some point, and that just isn't happening here. He gambled by giving up a rather good seniority at Southwest to start at the bottom of the mighty Delta. Whether he made the right decision will be answered when he turns 65 or 67.

On the other hand, Delta has been hiring some pretty big numbers since 2014 and they've hired a lot of younger folks, especially early on when they were passing up on high time RJ captains in favor of younger and lower time FO's which I think could lead to stagnation down the line at Delta. Lots of choices at Delta though... Choices at Southwest are more limited because of single type fleet, though I like Southwest base options better than most, and living in base is key.

I do recall being a newhire prior to our current contract how annoying it was for captains to always be badgering me about applying elsewhere because they were pi$$ed off due to contract without so much as knowing a single thing about me - just looking at my employee number.

It is what it is, but I certainly wouldn't consider one's career a failure or a miss if they made it at Southwest. Lots of money to be made here as well.