He'll never admit it, after all, he's wedded to Southwest:

The comment section is so intriguing. I wish I could've been a part of that when it first came out.

Seems like it'd be easier to simply temporarily suspend the non-rev privileges of those employees associated with inappropriate dress and demeanor (ie, do what the policy says will happen if non-revs act up) rather than launch an internal marketing campaign aimed at misbehaving non-revs that the misbehaving non-revs will never see. How many non-employees read Deltanet?

LOL. Yeah, I remember one combination (I forget which was which) where the airplane had a mix and match with a red nose and it looked like a clown nose.

At least now we have all the airplanes painted in the same paint scheme. Now if we could just get them to keep the DC-9 tails as clean as they do with the MD-88 tails. This is an ongoing problem with the DC-9/MD-80 series aircraft. If I'm remembering correctly, a few years ago the 88 tails were getting really dirty and Delta implemented some kind of special cleaning schedule to specifically address this. I wonder if they're using the same schedule on the -9's. I've just always thought it looks bad to have an airplane with black soot all over the tail.

Reserve question
 

Lets assume you hit/exceed your max reserve hours for the month. If I understand correctly, you're released from reserve obligations for the rest of the month. Can you pick advertised trips from the swap/pick-up board in this case?

Clark Howard is an ass. period

It's one strategy just as selling covered calls, that everyone seems to think is risk adverse, is. I've made quite a bit of $$$ buying way out of the money calls on (ALK, AAPL for example).
Remember, you can sell the options at any time-you don't have to wait until the expiration date-in fact very few do wait. With the Jan 12.50 call sitting at 1.10 right now, if the underlying stock goes to 11.70 in the next 2-3 months, the option "should be" around 1.50 or a 36% increase with just a 6% in the stock price. A 6% stock price increase will have around a 10% increase on your $9 ITM calls-do you realize the difference? Risk/reward-that's all.
It's a simple way to leverage stock price increases over the short term. With oil coming down and industry estimates going up, it might be worth a look to some. Should be interesting to see where we are mid July-Aug.

Talking about percentages when talking about buying selling calls (when compared to the underlying stock) is an apples to oranges comparison. Of course you are going to make a bigger percentage gain with the option. And.. you are correct that you can sell that option if it goes up to collect that gain. No argument there. The question is... will you? hehehehe Let's suppose that you are praying for it to hit the $13.60 in order to make money.. with the deep in the money call, your percentage gain is waaaaay bigger, but I tend to not look at percentages in options because you don't play with the same amount of money as you would if you were strictly investing in the underlying security. BTW.. I am glad you made money in AAPL options.. their premium is way to scary for me. But I do think that this is a good time to buy the underlying.. I have an order in right now.. YMMV of course :)


For anybody: Do you ever long the option and then short the stock? This is a Jim Cramer idea, and I have tried it a couple of times.. you literally cannot lose money.. it's hard to increase the gain you have locked in with the short.. but you definitely cannot lose money doing that.. I was wondering is anybody else has gone this route..

Great discussion.

I would pay to see Dave Ramsey kick Clark Howard's ass.

My strategy is to lock in a specific % of gains-keeps emotions out of it. I never expect nor wait for the underlying to hit the strike price + premium paid. (APPL was unique in that expiration was 2 years out and my far OTM calls quickly became ITM). I will watch this one(Jan '12 12.5s) as I am curious about the potential "recovery play" this summer. In this case, I would sell them all with a 25% gain which could be in the next month or two (my estimation). I am typically all out 4 months out (September in this example), so as to avoid premiums being quickly eroded.

BTW, a great website with a variety of strategies.
Options Strategies: Getting Started