What does S.West mean? Is that code for Skywest or Southwest?

In the airline business today, 4 years with any major airline is still a newbie. Your buds with promising careers could easily be out of work pretty fast and find the next ten years of their life after "the event" will involve a massive emotional rollercoaster ride. They will hear a lot of talk like, "you are almost back on property, it will be this summer". But that's just scary talk, what am I doing trying to scare everyone...

But here is what some went through though if you must know. Years flew by pretty quickly for some, as one stopgap measure after another was attempted to move on in a way, but move on with dignity and a life for their families. Not only did they feel the near (false) recall but so did everyone else and the furloughees were sometimes hard pressed to find a good job in the aviation business that did not hold their previously enviable job and accomplishments against them.

Anyone with a "promising career" at a major airline is in jeapardy. A 2 year newbie at Delta to a 4 year newbie at any other major to a senior captain at another who's airline is lucky enough to be picked off. A union bust maneuver or terror disaster can make the once untouchable recently unemployed. Any hickup or oil at 100+ a barrel and you get the idea. This ride in aviation is largely luck and circumstances. Sure, we have to work hard but with seniority being the way it is, a lot rides on luck and how things turn out 25 years after you say "I Do" to the airline you chose or who chooses you. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either trying to scam you, or they are a fool.

Another perspective.

Once a person "pays their dues" and scrapes and crawls their way up the chain and "makes it" to the major airline ranks, then life tends to evolve more around family and life itself.

It's very much understandable, and highly likely, that many are unwilling to go back and replicate (start at a regional again) the previous 10 years of financial struggle for some sort of promised career that:
1) they already earned twice over, and
2) they have already had snatched from them, and
3) with hindsight experience and knowledge of the previous 2 items, and
4) the hindsight and knowledge that life is a lot more about life than a job, especially if the prospects are crap in one particular career field.

Many furloughed pilots chose to go into lucrative careers in search of a nice life, based on their education, smarts, ability to succeed - back in the military, the corporate aviation segment, other industries (engineering, marketing, sales, finance, several who I know are now practicing doctors and lawyers).

Some guys, even with the knowledge of what has become of this business, still feel the call of the wild. Some mistakenly think of their jobs like they were when they were happy, and might not be fully emotionally over a major airline pilot job that just is not the same as it once was. But they still remember it as being something they miss. So some are willing and able to come back to UAL because they know they just want something like this to get them back into the saddle. This isn't everyone, just a few who I know.

There are a thousand other perspectives. 2144 perspectives to be exact. Many won't touch UAL with a 2144 foot long pole, while others are ready to ask "how high" on the way up. Some will be the biggest UAL cheerleaders possible and may be the key to a fresh perspective that will make UAL great once again. Some will come back and will leave in disgust a few years later. You can't broad brush reply to such a question, it is very complicated.