SWA vs Delta We Are Not In The Neighborhood
 

Indeed, according to the company's filings, Southwest devoted 33.2% of its operating costs to "salaries, wages, and benefits" last year -- a number that grew nearly 8% in comparison to 2013 compensation. That compares to American's labor costs of "approximately 25% of our operating expenses," and Delta's devotion of 24.1% of its operating expenditures to "salaries and related costs" and "profit sharing" in 2014.*

We keep pointing this out to the die hards gzsg, but it's like talking to a brick wall. W2, not even close to SWA, and they make more in less days worked each month. If their new rumored rates are accurate, their W2's will rival our wibebody captains W2's, and again in less days worked. Come Friday evening, it's back to the drawing board for our "union". We'll see how quickly RA comes back to the table to get our backpacks reinstalled!

What are the rumored rates?

Our TA rates seem to exceed the above:

Jan 16 737-800 $249
-900 $251
Jan 17 -800 $257
-900 $258
Jan 18 -800 $264
-900 $266

Do they get PS?

Was hoping they would have gotten much more.

Our TA rates do exceed their rates, barely. Their "retirement" is one of their few week areas, they get a match of 9.3 percent on their 401K, and about 9.5 percent profit sharing. Where they far exceed us Army is with their rigs, i.e. vacation paid around six, and that is in addition to trips touching dropped. Like I said, at the end of the day, rates are only a part of the overall equation. The W2 is the equalizer, and their W2 is superior to ours.

Do you happen to have the FO rates?
If you don't want to post them can you PM me?

I doubt they would beat us fairly easily on W2. If the forum numbers on profit prove to be true between the PS and higher DC we will be well above them looking at our 737 rates. We have copilots making over 300,000.

Sorry, I don't

I haven't heard any numbers yet. Plenty of talk about "good" codeshare/interline. Excited about that...

You missed the point Sailing.

SWA spends a much higher percentage of their employees. We are not in the neighborhood.

After the TA fails, we need a minimum of $200 million per year more.

And we still will be far cheaper than SWA.

If you compare revenue on each airlines entire fleets I suspect your right with our much larger average size. If you compare revenue on the 737 domestic then I suspect that the Margin is way smaller even given our 737's probably exceed SWA's by a large revenue margin. Should we also compare SWA payrate to our average across all fleets?

Standard DALPA shill. Looking at rates only. Think about 42 hours and three weeks off for a week of vacation. Think about reserves getting 6.5 TFP per day guarantee. Rates tell very little of the story. Open time premium pick up and much more.

Ummmmm.....HAD copilots making over $300k. Seems that ALPA helped the company solve that problem this iteration. :D

Remember, the SWA rates aren't hourly. They are paid by the "trip", so their hourly rate is actually higher, because a trip is somewhere around 45-50 minutes. (THAT'S why they taxi so fast :D)

It's an artificial metric designed so that there is no clean comparison between SW and the other legacy pay rates. The conversion is supposedly just under 15% but there's some fuzzy math on longer legs.

Think about open time pickup to FAR's. Think about lower rates. Think about GS's paying 1.5 instead of 2x. Think about half the profit sharing and 7.7% less DC. Are you still a DPA shill?

Edit: Here is SWA's vacation. Nice and better then ours but nothing like posted above. Crew Skeds can also split trips touching vacations to keep you working the part outside the vacation period.

First, that product evaluates the pay for the days WITHIN the vacation block, but does not attempt to evaluate the Vacation Overlap pay. While this is a piece of the solution, it’s not complete: within a 7-day block, you will never be paid less than 26.25 TFP (trips pulled or 3.75 TFP/day, whichever is greater), and you’ll never be paid more than 30 hours of flying, plus deadheads and rigs. In practice, about 36 TFP is the most you can possibly get during the 7 day period, and about 32 TFP (i.e. a dense 4-day) is the most you’re likely to encounter
Current averag line at SWA is 12.3 days paying 87 TFP.

I will bet not, even if the TA passes there will still be a large number of OE drops. Add in higher rates and no one will starve.

Sailing, what was pilots(ours) percentage of revenue pre ch11(historically) and now?

I have to go to work. I don't have time to try and look up the NWA and Delta numbers. I can tell you the total cost per pilot in 2014 was 261,000 and in 2004 it was 305,000 at Delta and 234,000 at NWA. I suspect the revenue will be more per pilot today. Keep in mind however in 2004 the cheap part of the list was furloughed at both NWA and Delta.

Is this the same study that shows SWA pilots taking an average cut of $16,000/year in 2012? A lot of those numbers are very suspicious.

Not for long... :(

SF, you're kidding right?

SWA still has lines of time, touching trips, higher vacation pay, ZERO code share/JV, and oh yeah... ZERO SL verification.

But some how we're WAY better... :rolleyes:

How is that better than 23 hours and 4 days off for a week of vacation?

Wait, what?

I'm Sorry, but your info is incorrect.

Crew Skeds cannot "split trips touching vacations to keep you working the part outside the vacation period." unless you want them to. At SWA you have the option to either: drop all pairings touching the vacation, drop only the pairings touching the beginning of the vacation or, drop only the pairings touching the end of the vacation.

My last vacation paid 31 TFP after dropping ALL pairings touching it and gave me 19 consecutive days off. Vacation pulls are routinely 40TFP or better if you know the contract well enough to bid for the maximum credit pulled or incorporate a program called swaptimizer to do it for you.

Current August lines average 97 Trips For Pay across all bases. August lines average 18 days off across all bases at SWA.

No, he's not kidding. It's that Delta pilot superiority complex that some hold here. Hard to explain and impossible to justify...but it's sure there by a minority of the true cult members.

Carl

SWA's scope is so good they are doing 100% of their international widebody flying!

Thanks for being here shoelu. Correcting the misinformation here can be a daunting task. Some folks are absolutely wed to the notion that SWA's contract is inferior to all things Delta.

Carl

Too embarrassing for words.

Carl

And 100% of their domestic flying.

And 100% of their international flying. Hey, it may not be much but at least it's theirs!

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.