Originally Posted by
Freds Ex
DL actually has a significantly larger international footprint and cargo footprint than UAL. The majority of those footprints is operated by cheaper JV labor though, which is why DL has larger profit sharing checks and can afford to spend billions on turf wars, SEA being one of them.
If I was a WN pilot I'd definitely be more interested in management's ability to sustain selling a LCC+ product at the same price as a legacy carrier product than I would be about the base manning situation, it's pretty clear that doing it on the same routes as legacy carriers out of large hubs like DEN and ATL isn't going to be viable long term. Obviously commuting long-term sucks after getting displaced, but working for a carrier with a new and unproven business model is more unnerving when you're hitched to the airline for the duration of your decades long career. Frontier and Spirit have been doing the assigned seating thing forever and Spirit had the big front seat, both charged for checked bags, but neither could really compete once basic economy was fully rolled out at the legacy carriers. WN's bread and butter that built the company into the powerhouse of today was no-frills P2P flying from lower cost airports. Hopefully they can leverage the P2P network with the new frills and avoid costly turf wars in places like DEN, ATL, etc.
If I were a non-WN pilot, I would be very concerned about my penchant for going on other airline threads and posting management tips to a bunch of pilots who aren’t managers, especially when it is blatant misinformation. This reads like it was written in 2012. P2P is a shrinking portion of the SWA network. Denver flying is almost exactly the same as it was 2 years ago, they are just doing it with less bodies and more outstation overnights that bank in the mega station (hub).
The managers are going to manage. We are going to fly. Apparently other airline pilots are going to come and carpet bomb our threads with “advice”.