To all the haters on the SWA Hiring thread that told me I didn’t know what I was talking about......

OK, I'll come out and say it...

If it's true that we're temporarily hitting the brakes on hiring, I for one, am happy to see that. We need to catch up on upgrades as we are way out of balance in some bases.

The reason I say 'if it's true...' is because I can't find that memo on SWALife anywhere; there's no date on that memo, or any date; AK's email yesterday seemed vague with regards to hiring.

Hopefully, no merger on the horizon...

AK’s email didn’t completely say that we aren’t running new hire classes past mid September, but it was pretty damn close. I agree with Whackmaster that an M & A event is most likely on the horizon again. I’ve said since they built that new training center that a lot of new Sims doesn’t necessarily mean they’re only for organic growth. As much as I’d like to believe it is, I’ve been around this place long enough to know better. Blue horseshoe LUVS Alaska Airlines.

My buddy just said that Delta has a hiring freeze for two months. Can anybody confirm that through another source (i.e., buddy at Delta).
That would hint towards a more industry wide tapping the brakes on capacity growth.

Absolutely luv what you did there.

I wasn’t on property for the AirTran deal. Did SWA slow or freeze hiring (if they were hiring) before that was announced? Also was the 717 deal with DAL worked out before it was announced?

If so....

SWA freezes hiring + DAL maybe found an additional 20+ 717’s according to the DAL forum = HAL + a whole lot of hmmmm

So how long to hold a line on the A330 out of MDW?

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Exactly. We are still running classes through at least September and have committed to the July round of interviews with job offers which will fill another month or two of classes.
If anyone with a bit of sense in their head looks at our numbers right now personnel wise, you can see that we are heavy on the FO side and lagging a bit on the captain side. If there is any slowing in hiring, we will still be around 800 for the year, which is still above the original target number. The fact that we have tons of reserves sitting during the summer is atypical and cannot be lost on the bean counters. Whatever we are hiring for is coming, I suspect in the same slow, unannounced way that we have grown for the last few years.
Zero chance there is a merger/acquisition on the horizon. Anyone who wants to put some money on that can send me a PM. If airline stock prices start to slide in a major way, then maybe....but not now.

Why have a major Career Expo and extend the application window only to freeze hiring days later?? Seems like if it was simply because there were too many FOs they wouldn’t have done these things. Seems more like everyone in the company was blindsided by this.