Heyas,

There is a lot of soft time built into the way the "trips" work at SWA. There is a major disconnect between actual flight time and credit.

Imagine, if you will, that DTW-ATL was blocked at 1:30, and hit that mark %95 of the time. But, that particular leg gets paid at 2:00 because of the way the contract works. Lets also say that you actually need to fly 2:10 before you start to make any money on "block or better".

There isn't a lot of incentive to make time on that leg, in fact, you might as well go fast, because the chances of making any time are near zero and you can get to your place in line at Chick-fil-A that much quicker.

Now lets say you have a month of those. By the end of the month, your credit time is 80, but your actual flight time is 60. Now you can pick up another day or two and rack up some more credit.

This system only works if there is a pay system in place that chronically pays significantly more than actual flight time, and a "pad" before you get to making more money for longer flight times. This would also explain, the, er, hustle, because the more flight time you save, the more you can pick up.

Pilots are pilots, no matter who they work for. There wouldn't be the "hustle" unless some fiscal incentive was attached to it.

Nu