Do you ask for PM SC? When you do you're volunteering for SC unless for some reason they deny you because you've been used too much on SC or what have you.

FYI, 11th yr SWA Captain here. I believe I'm pretty representative of an "average" (or more likely slightly below average) SWA pilot in terms of earnings & productivity. I commute to my base. I have small kids at home. I have a great life outside this job and very much enjoy all the days off I can get. IOW, I basically fly my line and try to improve it where I can through trip trading WITHOUT increasing total work days each month. I pick up very little (~6 extra work days total last year). My 2010 W2 showed $224,860 and I flew 761 hours....virtually all of it at straight pay. I mostly do one 3-day trip each week, or the occasional 4-day every now and then. They're usually not commutable. I shoot for an average of 100 TFP monthly throughout the year to hit our annual household income target. I have 4 weeks of vacation each year.

Best of luck with your negotiations.

Here's the thing, in 2014 I seriously doubt that SWA will make any less than it is now. If anything it'll be more to placate the angry SWA pilots over the AAI merger who see one group getting tremendous raises and they get nothing but a SLI with people SWA never hired.

If in 2014 our contract is settled and our rates do not equal SWA where it matters, in aircraft of similar mission and size, then we have to come to terms with the following:

1. Delta pilots are not as good as SWA pilots and don't deserve equal pay for equal work,
2. Delta management is not as good as SWA,
3. DALPA is not as good as SWAPA, or
4. All of the above.

It would be nice to input a time preference without volunteering. Yet another thing to add to the wish list.

Smokey,

Thanks for sharing your info with us. As you can see, we have some folks in denial about this. I think posts like yours help. Thanks again.

Absolutely 100% agree.

The time slots they publish on deltanet should be on icrew and I should be able to say out of the 12 slots be able to list my preferences in numerical order and a computer, not a human, should run a utilization order and post the SCs.

Also I should be allowed to know when I'm going to get SC as there is obviously a system in place but it's not published for us to see.

Smokey, you have a caller on line 2, his name is Carl, he want's to say thank you for proving him right. Would you like to hang around and answer more calls?

I'm telling you, if pay and scope matters as much as everyone here says it does to them then there is a lot of good that's going to come from this SWA/AAI merger. I mean, 717 pilots making more than Delta 777 pilots with 100% scope protection to boot.

And I don't care how it came to pass, I just love that it's come to pass.



And nobody, nobody, should be happier about this than DALPA, right?

What's your definition of "as good as" - annual W-2s?