Is 17 years to hit 50% system seniority out of a 40yr career considered on pace or below standard progression for DL? 25 years to reach 25% system seniority?

I think you and your Captain are overestimating UAs promises of growth. It could happen, but it also could not. UA also has more of a tendency to make big flashy orders and proclamations that don't always pan out for the best. It's anyone's guess how growth plays out in the airline industry over a multi decade time horizon.

Concur. I’m a UAL WB FO and bid reserve over the winter. I flew one trip in 4 months. Even made a good amount of add pay due to the unused short calls.

Even if you (OP) stay narrowbody at a legacy, you’ll be more senior due to everyone senior to you peeling off to the wide bodies. In 10 years, compare your seat seniority to someone who stayed at South West - you’ll be way more senior in seat due to that reason alone.

I never applied to SWA because I didn’t want to fly a 737 doing regional flying for the rest of my career. Options of flying are a benefit to a legacy airline.

I’d say throw your apps in and see what happened.

Long term Southwest will be just fine, and during your career every airline will have some ups and downs. You sound like someone who has been in the industry for 6 weeks.

Thanks for the replies everyone.

Personal attack? Good lord…

Not directing this at you two, but these posts illustrate a point that needs to be made. Analyzing career progression based on what has happened in the past, of even what it currently takes to hold X is absolutely irrelevant. Especially given the crazy ups/downs of the Covid/Covid Recovery era. Way too many crazy examples over the last few years to use any of that data in your analysis.

The question prospective NH should be asking themselves is this: How long will it take you to reach X if you get hired tomorrow (or in 6 months if you haven't even applied yet...) At least for DL, fully 2/3 of the list has been hired in the last 10 years. And in just the last 3 years, DL has hired 6400 pilots. We have 1200 pilots under 30, and over 3000 under 35.

There is simply no realistic way to predict what 10 years will bring, much less 25. While we are predicted to hire ~1000/year 'for the forseeable future' (i.e.3-4 years), obviously none of that is guaranteed, but it's hard to imagine a scenario where it would be greater than that. Furthermore, as hiring returns to 'normal', everything you can do will get more senior. We have already seen NB A get progressively more senior with each of the last 4-5 bids. After nearly a year of a pretty stable ~87% to hold plug Captain, it has now progressed to the low 80's (and one outlier bid in the low 70's). And that's just to be the plug. If you want to have even a few folks beneath you, the slope is pretty steep at those lower %'s. And again, that will get more senior by the time you could get there...

FWIW, to the OP, while you certainly have a much better grasp on what's going on at SWA than anyone here, It's really hard to imagine that Elliott Mgmt's involvement will liquidate SWA. It may be a rough year or two, but SWA will be fine in the bigger picture. There would have to be a really compelling reason to leave to give up being top 200 at retirement there. You will be nowhere close to that at DL. Only you can answer these questions. Good luck.

Well, you did say this:

You clearly meant it as a put down. I don't blame him for taking offense.

Thanks for the feedback. I think you are right that I'd have to find a very compelling reason to leave SWA at this point.

This has been a great thread and I really appreciate the Delta folks who have chimed in with an honest take. This has, for the most part, been a great thread.

They said over ten years ago they wanted to be 20,000 pilots by 2020. I don't think they even got close. Now they said they want to be 30,000 by 2030 or something? I agree with you. There is no way. Still I'd probably pick United over Delta. Even if you don't like WB flying they at least want to do their own flying and that is good for the whole seniority list. Delta will never match United's international footprint. Go look at their WB fleet count vs. Delta on Wiki and their orders. They have almost double what Delta has.