What about your former colleagues that are at AMR, or LCC? This is really really sad.

Hey I turned LUV down knowing in the short term I would make more there. Fact is that if you take a long term view, they will stagnate, and have issues if they do not join an alliance. I see that happening, but they are way behind the power curve on that one.

I suspect that we will top them in pay on the next contract (if we make it to section 6) and if we get a modification, it will happen during the agreement. Scope is number one, but a close second is pay, and we have to top them by a good margin for me to agree to anything.

I don't have any former colleagues there. AMR hasn't hired since I was in high school, and no one I know is dumb enough to go to LCC.

My humble opinion, I wouldn't touch SWA. You think Big D stagnation is bad..? SWA is looking at years of stagnation and possibly pay cuts. They may keep their precious pay, but they will increase their CEO requested "efficiency," which means more productivity and less pilots. Just my opinion, but probably no movement there for a while. History always teaches us lessons, the one at the top with industry leading pay, never remains at the top. Just saying' be careful what you wish for. I hope SWA pilots can stay at the top for all of us, but I fear their cost creep will be taken advantage of by management.

Well I have friends at both.

My friends that went to AMR in 1997 are hoping to upgrade before they are 50. They left before they were 30.

At LCC most of my friends are making 30 dollars an hr less than I am.

Why? Do you work there?

Well, LCC just might be the place to go now. They have tons of old guys there, so upgrades might come quickly. With AMR in the muck, and maybe in play for merger/acquisition, you might get an A330 upgrade before you would be off probation pay at SWA. If Dougie spins off the west, and merges AMR and LCC, it could go down painlessly.. they could get an agreeable SLI (yeah right) and new hires could be captains in less than a year. You are way too new to this industry to be so bitter at this point. You have no idea what the future holds right now, and it is in a vast state of flux. Go chasing the money, and you will always be a new hire, but if that floats your boat.. go for it. Remember this... Pan Am was the place to be in the 60s, TWA in the 70s, DAL/UAL/AMR in the 80s, No real "leader" in the 90s, and SWA had their turn in the 2000s. This decade is just getting started, and the playing field is pretty level.

You may not have colleagues, but you DO have contemporaries.

Ive got a friend that was hired at WN about a year after I got picked up at DL, which is right about when hockey got picked up...

She is barely able to hold a line out of OAK, much less hold a line out of any base. Funny how the grass is so greener if you don't actually take a good look...

Don't forget the upgrade time due to retiments will put making captain around 15 years from now best case scenario.

What's the deal with our block times lately? They all seem excessive - 2:41 BUF-ATL?? Flt plan was for 1:35 - got into ATL 40 minutes early. That's even after delaying departure 15 minutes, so we wouldn't show up too early. And me flying with a cost index of 0, mach .74. I was told the block times were driven by marketing - guess it makes our on-time stats look good, but we're ticking off the pax by sitting 20-30 minutes for a gate to open up.

Not just on that leg, but all of them on my last 4 day...routinely 15-30 minutes early everywhere. Dispatchers told me to ignore Attilla - don't get me started on that program - I'll never be convinced of its efficiencies or benefits, when we're the only ones playing.