Pay no attention to the posts above wich prove you are completely wrong about SWA vacation. I'm sure it doesn't bother you these days since you are wrong 99% of the time you hit submit. Someday I'll figure out why you like lying to the DAL pilot group.

If 3.B.4. was based on the 737 and not the 757 and included SWA what would our April 1, raises have been? Somebody did the math I'm sure. They just don't wear a uniform to work, probably a nice suit.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^This bears repeating.^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^


So why did our MEC take time out of the bucket, not expand the team, and jump at the first (worst) course of action available: Jaw Dropping Concessions????

..........

This seems difficult to believe. That would equate to 8 Trips per day on average - that means that some are starting out with much higher than 8. Everyone I've talked to at SWA says you typically start out lower than that and then trader your way into trips that pay 8 per day and that's around the high end without any revisions.

Many SWA pilots have this inferiority complex - they always have to boast about their contract and it seems they stretch the truth quite a bit. When I J/S with guys in the cockpit they always show me their schedule and tell me what they fly - because it's on paper right in front of you. On these boards....not so much. Would love to see the Company bid pack or whatever it's called that shows 97 trips and 18 days off as the AVERAGE for August.

There is no doubt that SWA pay is less than DAL - yes you probably can work more at SWA (key word WORK) and make more but your bid line will almost certainly pay less when you figure in benefits which you absolutely must on any pilot contract. 9.3% DC plan is pretty poor - around JB standards I think.

Don't know of any Delta guys that have recently left for SWA, but I know many SWA pilots that now call Delta home. Food for thought!

Here you go:

Base: Avg TFP: Avg days off:
Hou -- 95.35 --- 17.53
DEN -- 98.27 --- 17.39
OAK -- 95.79 --- 17.47
MDW -- 97.33 --- 17.56
DAL -- 97.35 --- 17.46

Houston and Denver have the lowest and highest TFP average for August. Everywhere else is somewhere between those two but the system avg is around 96tfp. Denver has the lowest avg days off of all the bases (the highest avg days off is MDW at 17.56)

WRT vacation Sailing is technically correct regarding the min paying vacation of 26.75tfp. However the reality is that the only people who see that low of vacation pay is a reserve pilot with mid month vacation or someone bidding for maximum time off.

The highest paying vacation lines are those with weekend flying which go junior so even the bottom line holder is going to be able to get a vacation that pays over 30tfp for 1 week. I'd say 32-38tfp is about average for bottom line holders who bid for max pay and if you know the contract and are senior north of 55tfp is doable. I bid around 92% (bottom line holder) and my last vacation was around 45tfp.

FO pay rates (per trip)
1 50
2 84
3 94
4 104
5 114
6 118
7 122
8 125
9 126
10 130
11 131
12 132

SWA 33% of expenses on labor

Delta 24% of expenses on labor

This TA is not even a bunt.

Round 2 $200 million more per year minimum.

Those numbers are probably accurate. What is not mentioned is that they are the actual amounts worked after vacation, paid drops, sick ect.. The numbers are probably better at Delta.

Okay so let me get this straight - average time is 98 trips per month. So a 10 year FO flying average time (in order to get his 12 days/month work schedule) would make about $144k/year. Seems that most guys boast an incredibly higher total pay and much less days worked. So if someone is doing that then it would appear that someone else is working more and making less (there's a fixed amount of trips in the system and I imagine SWA doesn't add say an extra 10% of unscheduled trips every month). That is...until you actually talk to someone in the cockpit and see their schedule. The highest paid SWA pilots, undoubtedly, lurk on APC.