I've been saying it for a while now and am fairly confident that they're going to make another play for JBA. Yes....another, as they already tried twice unsuccessfully before the AirTran fiasco was consummated.

Yeah seriously. You do realize that the JBA facility in MCO does not fall under "Herb time", right Zap?

As an outsider looking in...it seems like the Air Tran purchase was the catalysts for LUV's downhill slide into becoming just another airline. Culture is evaporating, the koolaid is wearing thin, labor unrest has reared its ugly head, rapid movement has come screeching to a halt. Maybe the bean counters are happy...no wait, isn't he gone now?

Well, you're talking to a former AirTran 7+ year cptn who lost his seat and roughly a third of his relative seniority. For me it IS just another airline and they can take their CULTure and koolaid and flush them down the toilet for all I care.

Yea, I never would have guessed. You can take the tranny out of the ghetto, how does that go again?

Spoke with Rocky about a few weeks ago. He said they planning on 630 or so. He said they would hire more but thats all the sim time they had.

Prior to AirTran swa had about 5500 pilots, 8300 now. Prior to CQT recurrent was only 1 sim, now it's 2. New hires used to have type ratings, most don't these days and the syllabus is expanding although I don't know by how much yet. Add in all increased hiring and upgrades that need several sims each and you get the picture.

I'm sure it had nothing to do with Management and contract negotiations! Only difference between Airtran management and Southwest management is the current CEO dresses in drag more often and is averse to any technology upgrades.

The slide started long before ATN was even a glimmer in GK's eye. More like about 2006...Redefining Excellence--the rollout of an accountants vision for how an airline should be run. It has just taken a while for that vision to be fully implemented, but we are certainly there now.

This is a plausible reason for 18 sims but last week in AQP they told the class that SWA will have 11,000 pilots in the next 3-5 years. I really don't believe they could train a net of 3,000 pilots in the next 3-5 years. The training department is under staffed now and struggling to keep who they have. Plus they'll be in competition with the 3 legacies for pilots. So are they lying to us or is there a merger/buyout in the works with an airline that has about 3,000 pilots? Maybe with an airline that placed an order for 60 airframes about the same time SWA deferred the delivery of 60 airframes? Time will tell.