Southwest flight attendants, dispatchers and mechanics all have industry-leading contracts by leaps and bounds. Southwest pilots on the other hand have industry-leading self-esteem issues.

All I can control is my vote, and I guarantee it will be no to anything that isn’t industry leading in pay and benefits....

100% agreed.

The vast majority of this pilot group want industry lagging contracts.

After 2-5 years of "negotiating", they'll settle for some more QOL restrictions, some "gains" (for the company), a sub COLA "raise" or 2, and the majority of the Pollyannas will trip over themselves to vote YES!

Same as it ever was.

United is getting 19 737-700s from SWA. Two of them are already on the property being configured. They were former AT planes on lease. The contract was signed before the MAX was parked, so it was intended that they would have been replaced.

On the subject of 2020 pilot hiring, I just got an interview for the first week of February. I think I saw 20 slots on the website.
If anyone else is going, PM me; we can meet up for a beer!

good luck!

i would anticipate a lot of why southwest, what if your class is delayed and what if “insert name” airline calls you before class.

Not sure your background or experience, highly recommend you reach out to Vicki Ross at ace interview prep.

Seconded...

If you are speaking to MiFilMETO, I would guess military transport, of the Lockheed C-130 flavor. Just smells that way.

BTW, the Hercules has been in continuous production for 65 years now. Huzzah!

I received an interview invite as well. Couldn't believe it! Congrats on yours!

ETA: I have a quick question on travel to the interview. I would love to ride down on SWA, as they provide the means for that, and I would have the opportunity to interact with folks along the way. However, I'm close enough where I could drive, too. I was looking at the flight schedules vs the morning interview time slot I chose, and driving might make more sense. I'm in the morning group, so if I flew home I wouldn't get in till almost 11pm; a drive would have me home around 5-6pm. I do not have the following day off of work, and could have it fill in with a trip.

Does SWA mind/care if we do not fly down with them?? Just wanted to get your thoughts.

If you fly treat it as part of the interview. If you’re close enough to drive or live somewhere we don’t serve, just make sure you get there in time for the interview.

It won't matter either way, with the timings you mention I'd drive...however...if you are in the AM group I'd drive up the night before and stay at the hotel.

It doesn't matter. I drove straight to the interview and drove straight home.

Are these new interviews still based off the last window?

You are correct, sir!, I've got a lot of Herk stink on me, I guess.

Great, that's exactly what I would do.

Great, thanks!

Looks like it for me.

Yes. Mine was anyway, and I haven't heard anything else about a new window.

Anyone heard anything about the SW career expo?

Looks like SWA is canceling/deferring/postponing all new hire classes and upgrades UFN. Bad news always drops on Friday...

It seems like the new hire class and upgrade class in February will still take place. Everything that was planned after that, so March 1st on, is cancelled. Not a good news, but I would be extremely surprised to find a single person who wasn't expecting that. Stagnation in the middle of the biggest hiring wave in the industry! What a mess...

February classes are going as planned. Classes from March through June deferred. Anyone already scheduled for March was given an opportunity to move up to February.

9 max sims on property by June.

Hmm...today on the virtual fair the SWA rep said the window is opening on 24 Feb for new applications...that seems opposite of 'they are canceling everything'

The window will open and they will continue to interview for a pool. As said before the wildcard is when and how fast the MAX comes back. We can go from over staffed to under staffed very quickly.

This might have been before they made a decision about freezing all classes. Or they may slowly interview for classes after the MAX is recertified. Either way we all got an internal memo just an hour ago. It's the latest, so scratch all you know from before.

They’ll lose people from the pool pretty quickly with everyone else hiring. I would also expect attrition from the bottom as pilots who have been there for less than a year or two bail out. Interviewing to backfill that attrition is probably smart.


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But wait, there's more!

https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/24/busin...fpNBb2ySBXMuGY

My uninformed opinion is we pushed those classes back to clear space for the impending MAX training. FAA has said it expects certification before the middle of the year and it sounds like SWA wants to train everybody at once over the course of a couple months, as opposed to a metered base by base training cycle. The purchase of 3 additional MAX sims supports that. Sucks big time for folks who have class dates and interviews because we will no doubt lose some excellent people, but this saga REALLY needs to come to an end and if it takes a brute force approach to accomplish that then so be it. Good luck to all.

Nobody really knows yet what's going to be required in the MAX training. We could be running classes until the training program is established and then freeze classes, or reduce the volume. We'll still have plenty available simulators that are not MAXes available for new hire, upgrade and recurrent training.​​​ I think the reason to stop classes is simply they are sick and tired of everyone complaining how over staffed we are. It also comes down to how much they're paying for those green bars and extra reserves sitting at home. I think they finally realized the MAX is definitely not coming any time soon. And even if this time Boeing's prediction to fix it by the middle of the year is right (they lost their credibility long time ago), we have more than enough people to fly the extra airplanes already, so why hiring more?

Can't disagree with you. Hiring should have stopped long ago. My thinking is less to do with Sim availability and more to do with Instructor availability and Training Scheduling being able to handle the task at hand on top of all other training events. Time will tell.

Anyone with an early March class date was offered to move up to the Feb 4th class. Some took the offer, others did not. The other classes that have been pushed back did not have anyone assigned to them yet. Interviews will continue so the spigot can be turned back on as quickly as possible should we get some good news.

one word; Max

Good job Sherlock!

I would say bad logic more than uninformed. The MAX training will have to be done in the MAX sims. There's another 15 NG sims that can handle the rest of the training. It's more about avoiding paying pilots to sit around and do nothing--even during the busiest part of the year (summer). Don't need as many pilots after August. No MAX until August or later--no need for more pilots.

​​​​​​This

9 MAX sims, working 21 hrs each a day, is 189 sim hours a day. Say 3 hrs per crew, is 63 crews or 126 pilots per day.
126/9500 = 75 days to train everyone. That is the most optimistic figure, reality is more like 4-5 months. This assumes they have the instructor staff to handle this.

Then, there will be time to bring the parked planes back on the line.

If the FAA blessed the MAX tomorrow, it could be a year before the dust settled, so to speak.

Those things would happen concurrently. If they announced the required training tomorrow it would be easily in full service by summer. Of course it doesn’t look like anything will be announced in the immediate future.

Apparently the 800 sims can be software configured to train what they are expecting the mcas requirements to be.

The head of the FAA called airline leaders and briefed them on the return to service timeline and training requirements.

My speculation is that SWA immediately moved to clear the calendar for this training so they can get the MAX back quicker than the other airlines.

After 9/11 and the great recession, SWA honored all CJOs and brought those people on property.