Pilots tend to get paid by what they negotiate. They continue to negotiate better pay (and benefitss) as revenue and profits increase, not liabiltiy threats. The threat to your career is not single pilot ops, but competition and/or bad management. The infrastructure required to establish a cargo network is very prohibitive. Quite the opposite for pax carriers. Pax carriers always have competition among the smaller regionals and majors, and they in turn have it from the legacy carriers and the legacy carriers have it from the international carriers. Fred Smith had the foresight to establish FDX in China and Europe early. It is now paying off. UPS domestically, and UPS and DHL internationally are FDX;s main competition and there is room for all of us. As for the Polar and the Kalittas of the world, they fill a great niche and do very well, but will probably be bought out by one of the big three cargo guys at some point. As to SWA or FDX, the answer is pretty easy. Whoever hires you first and enjoy the hell out of your career never looking back. I was hired with 12 guys in the mid 90s. 1/2 of them left with in 3 years for pax carriers they considered better. All but one of them, was furloughed and basically set their careers back. They left for better pay, which was unsustainable given the tragic events and bankrupticies that followed. My point, pay is only sustainable with revenue and profit growth. When some legacy carriers had 10,000 pilots going into a recession with the highest pay rates in the industry, problems would have occured regardless of 9/11 (IMHO) Fed Ex was pretty brutal the first couple of years flying nights. After that, it became a matter of choice. Being junior at a higher seat and going for the cash (which was not to bad if you lived in domicile), staying senior in lesser seat and going for lifestyle (and still pretty good cash), or commuting and staying junior going for the cash. A lot of choices and opitons, all pretty good. Best of luck to anyone who gets a class date at either.