Excellent! I was a minute into it before I noticed the car kept changing.

 

What a catch.

 

That was UNBELIEVABLE.

 

I will agree with you on this. I too am looking to diversify. I am in the middle of "due diligence" on two prospective SB's. The reality is that one needs to make their bread and butter doing something else besides flying airplanes. One can hope that this point changes in this next contract. We all wish it would, but many have been waiting for around a decade for that to happen. I for one am at least looking at something I know I can make the income I need to give my family the life we want.

 

If I was as young as you, I would leave for either SWA or FDX as soon as I could. They make a lot more money than you think, and they have a great deal of time off. Enough time off for you to run a good SB as well.

My 2 cents.

Carl

 

I agree, Carl. If I were 20 years younger (or maybe even as little as 10 years younger), leaving for SWA would be a complete no-brainer for me.

 

What about some of that contract flying offered in Asia? ANA is desperate for 767 CA...

 

It would only be if I got turned down by SWA and FDX. The Asia contracts are great and the money is really strong, but it's hard to also run a small business. FDX or SWA gives you really strong money with the time off to run a business. Best of both worlds.

Carl

 

Well, I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed.

But it does explain why the exhaust sound kept changing. Plus that Nissan ad messed up my retinas a little bit.

 

SWA is not somewhere I want to be, I turned them down. (Mainly because I see them as a company that will stagnate, and probably take on a decent amount of debt as the fight to compete with the Transnational airlines of the next decade) FDX maybe, but a two year tour in Asia to get back to a US base may not be good for the SB either. For an Airline DAL can allow a pilot to fulfill their obligations to the company and still get a good bit of time off. I would just bid reserve the rest of my career.

What I am looking at would more than make up for anything I could every make here. If I actually jump in to one in particular, I would be looking at flying as extra in less than five years. It is one of the benefits of taking over a SB that is established, but that someone has not had the time nor the desire to re-invest in. One thing is for certain, there is a lot that I am unscrewing that a group of Doctors did. Man those guys can mess something up.

I am being very deliberate in this process. It would not be just taking a bite off the apple, but swallowing it whole. If this deal is not the one, there will be one that follows shortly after it that I will probably invest in.