Originally Posted by
highsky
There is no gray about it: SWA is Pay For Training. SWA pilots have helped lower the bar for everyone else in the industry, and that's how I and many others will always see them. Just because it's a major airline, and people are "happy" to work there, doesn't make their PFT right. It is wrong, and always will be.
I think SWA is PFT because we made it that way. I think the 737 type was a requirement in the beginning to attract pilots who were already typed, thus decreasing the possibility for washout during training. Because we pilots realized that SWA was a good place to be, we CHOSE to pay for training to qualify ourselves instead of going to work for another operator who flies 73's first and moving to SWA. They have never said that you have to pay for your type, they just said you have to have one.