HELP! SWA or Current gig?
 

I had committed to remaining at the corporate operator I was flying for when I turned down my recall. It wasn’t until the situation changed at that operator that I started to think about leaving. I knew that you could make more money elsewhere, and that the airlines generally had a better retirement... but I was happy.

My advice to you, is to ask yourself if you are happy. If so, then forget about your class date and don’t look back. But if you aren’t happy and you want to finish out your career flying a narrowbody airplane to mostly domestic cities, you could do worse. You’ll probably upgrade by the time you reach 54 and have about ten years as a Captain making in the neighborhood of $300,000 and maxing out your retirement. Not as good as the prospects that you and I had in our twenties. But not half bad. Message me privately if you want to talk through specifics.


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You work for LM? Take the SWA job. You're one new CEO away from getting GE'ed, and the CEO you have now sure made life more miserable for everyone.

The general consensus I’ve tried to adhere to is wherever you are at age 40 ( if it’s a good job at a major or at Captain) you should stay. You will never be a senior Captain at wn and commuting blows


Pay, retirement and money in general are very important, but nothing beats family time. Saw you have kid(s) and not sure of their ages now, but you don’t get that back and they will never remember how much $ you did or did not make. Commuting will take months and or years away from what’s important. So, if you’re not willing to move, I would stay put

FWIW....44 yo will put you around 40-60% seniority in your class. Lots of older guys starting over so it’s not just you!

Plenty of good advice in this thread.

One thing I haven't seen mentioned is what happens if you get hurt or lose your medical? At SWA, even with kind of weak STD/LTD plans, you'll still likely be in a much better position then if you get sick at a corporate job.

I left a high paying corporate job and haven't looked back, even as wages for corporate flying have started to climb.

I found that at the end of the month I could count on averaging 8-8.5tfp/day without flying any premium trips. You can use that and the payscale to determine possible salary depending on how hard you want to work.

It's incredibly easy to pick up extra work. Once you get off reserve you will have lots of flexibility.

Count on 10 years or so but I think 8 or less is definitely possible for upgrades going forward.

I think that you will probably make more money by staying where you're at but with a huge uncertainty risk (compared to Swa) that goes along with corporate flying. $300k is great compared to a new hire airline FO but low for a Swa captain. Will you have to threaten to leave 5years from now to get another raise? I know you don't want to move, if you lose your corporate job would you relocate then? How many days do you work now and how many are you willing to work?

FYI with retirement and profit sharing I'm estimating north of $230k as a 4'th yr FO. I live in base and averaged 13 working days a month this year with zero stress away from work. Good luck with your decision.

Ps I know lots of former corporate guys at Swa but I don't know anyone that left Swa for corporate.

You are six months away from losing your medical and every six months for the next 20 years. I’d choose based on that criteria and how you may or may not be insured against that possibility.

On the other hand commuting sucks the life out of you. I commutes for seven years and was ready to leave the industry because of it. Now I live in base at Spirit and as bad as Spirit is nothing beats living in base. It’s an entirely different job. Now if we don’t see a quality contract I’m going to be putting the hard sell on my wife to move to another airline’s base because I refuse to commute ever again. It’s that bad!

If you commute, forget optimizing your schedule or picking up the add hoc trip here and there. Unless you just don’t care about being home. Commuting a five block reserve month costs me 12 hrs away from home on each end, if all goes well. That’s 5 days a month peed away. Plus the 15-16 days you are working gives you 10-11 days a month off. I give away at least 1 RSV block a month, take the hit in pay to maximize my home time with young kids.

Will be moving to base next year. I’m younger then you, but had a great Corp gig. I would not have taken the job at SWA if commuting was long term. It sucks that bad.

I say stay put.

One of the benefits of living in base is that you don't have uncompensated days away from home. Not so if you commute given our schedules not being that commuter-friendly. Essentially, if you're an AM'er, you'd fly in the evening before (your day off) and spend the night at a crashpad or hotel. You'd be able to fly home the same day at the end of your trip. Conversely, if you're a PM'er, you might be able to come in the day your trip starts, but there's a good likelihood you'll finish after the last flight has left necessitating a night in the crashpad or hotel room before heading home in the morning (again, your day off).

I'm one of those people who hates being away from home for work and not getting paid for it. Let's take a look at the math with the number of days being gone from home as a commuter vs. living in domicile and picking up work but being gone from home the same number of days as a commuter.

Our average daily guarantee is 6.5 TFP and that's also the minimum if you were to pick up a short premium turn.

So... using a 6.5 TFP figure 4 nights away from home per month spent commuting, I see that as potentially uncompensated 26 TFP in a month. Using Stitches' numbers, those numbers go to 32-34 TFP in a month in uncompensated days/nights away from home. To translate that into dollars:

1st year FO $1800-$2350/month of potentially uncompensated time using only first-year figures. Given that open time for first-year FO's is generally paid at second-year rates, that number goes up to $2600-$3400/month. See the trend?

For topped out captains, that translates to potentially $5850-$7650/month in uncompensated time.

Now mind you, those figures are just TFP figures and do not include retirement/profit share. Estimate another 25% on top of that for retirement and profit sharing numbers.

All I can say is... given our ability to pick up additional flying here and get paid for being away from home, commuting can be an expensive proposition at Southwest.

This is 100% correct.

The opportunity cost of commuting at SW is astounding.

My unwillingness to commute any more than I absolutely have to has cost me, conservatively, in the neighborhood of 3/4 of a million over the last 22 years, and I've been driving (2:45-5 hours) it for the last 16.