I’m calling BS. The company is required to send WARN notices for what 60 days but says April 1?

It seems clear that they are waiting on another government bailout.

Not to offer more voluntary programs is stupid and the labor relations email is a joke.

Agree. Total BS.

Using the cost units and the cost units’ families as pawns. And over Christmas.

America, the greatest corporatocracy in the world.

Stock charts over cohearts.

Err, uhm. At the risk of sounding like I read a few too many books, the idea of shareholder value trumping every other consideration owes its origins to Milton Friedman, a tremendously influential Chicago economist whose acolytes have turned his words into gospel and his ideas into policy. Friedman’s teachings began gaining traction in the 1980’s, right alongside supply-side economic theory, aka trickle-down economics.

But at the end of the day he was just a guy who was saying what wealthy capitalists had longed to hear ever since the New Deal; namely, that it was okay to transform an economy which created the greatest middle class the world has ever seen into what we have today.

You mean the bill that had three Democrat and three Republican cosponsors in the Senate, including Ted Stevens? The bill that is the very reason Southwest exists as anything more than a Texas intrastate airline?

Management attempted to capitalize on the crisis through concessions and failed. By issuing WARN notices to nearly every workgroup so far in advance is a last ditch effort to use fear and intimidation to obtain concessions. We will remember this.

I’ve already set a calendar reminder for every year. I know that I won’t forget.

With the payroll protection extension suppose to extend to March. So if the government do pass this before the year end and extend this to March. They can still furlough April first. Could that be why?

That's very true. From a competitive standpoint it helped SW come into its own.

Deregulation has had some positive and some negative effects.

The Act itself gave management some very powerful weapons. We've seen what happened as a result of the unchecked autonomy with the bankruptcy courts in the early to mid 1980's. Ultimately, pilot salaries have been lowered, along with career expectations, and career earnings. 40 years later, professional airline pilots should agree that it has lowered the bar for the profession.

The RLA on the other hand neuters labor while tempering management. The result is increased government control and influence throughout. I have not seen any successful pilot labor enhancements or improvements in the last 15 years or so with respect to running the act at the major's level. I think AA has been in protracted negotiations for some time now. I think they may get some relief in the next 4 to 7 years, but that's a pretty hard thing to forecast. Based on what we've seen. It will be a while.

No not that bill.

It is strange....I spoke to a guppy driver at SWA that made 440K last year. Blew me away. The salaries at LUV are pretty impressive. A whole lot better than widebody Captain at some major's. it's more than just an intrastate airline today. The backdoor deals that went into that bill and the State politics at play are something that I don't know about directly as I wasn't a citizen of Texas back then. I've read about it and it all seems to hinge around the money that was spent at DFW, which for sure benefits AA. As history has shown, SW's steady growth along with the easing of those restrictions have been two big positives for the airline. It's all about money at the end of the day. Follow the money and you follow the influence.

At present time however.......

Everyone in the industry is watching as to what the SW pilots will do.

Management played their cards and had no problem negotiating in public. Clearly, they threw down the gauntlet in public for a reason. They plan on pressuring labor. SWAPA is not likely very happy about that. Typically, negotiations are done in private so that they can be to some degree "in good faith." It shows bad faith to negotiate in public like that.

Gary Kelly refused a cheaper loan because it had strings attached. Those strings were the ability to manipulate stock price and to give dividends. That is a huge portion of our management compensation. Our management wants its employees to take concessions to pay for the more expensive loans that they decided to take so that their compensation would not go down. I hope nobody ever forgets this fact and is repeated again and again and again.

Southwest airlines could pay off all it’s debt with available cash and still have money in the bank. Let that sink in.