Nothing is up. The company has done ASR's for decades. They couldn't initially do it post COVID because of the PPP restrictions. When all that expired, they started with the dividend. Now they are back at repurchasing shares. SWA has excess cash on the balance sheet. The BOD feels comfortable with it. With these new board members, they approved everything that BJ has laid out for 2025. Same as it ever was. Rumor is Gangwal walks the halls a lot in the C-suite.

Any excess cash that is generated this year either through operations or through financing activities like sale/lease back tranactions will probably run right to the shareholder. To be honest, we shouldn't care all that much. SWA capex has been very big the last few years and still is. They already stated that they are planning 38 aircraft deiveries for 2025. That is the plan. Any excess deiveries will support fleet monetization and capital allocation. Another words, extract the cash out of those birds. As long as SWA stays in a net cash position on the balance sheet it shouldn't be a big deal. The company paid off $1.3 Billion in debt in 2024 and will pay in cash for another maturity of debt in May. SWA also reached an amended co-brand agreement with Chase. Nothing yet on the details but you can bet it will bring in money once it's launched.

Yield improvement coupled with higher load factors the last couple of quarters is definitly trending in the right direction. All of that on a decrease in capacity. You can tell things are starting to improve in the revenue/yield enviroment. Almost every airline had yield improvement with better load factors. The exception being Jetblue. As long as the industry keeps domestic capacity at bay and no macro economic shocks, margin expansion is a real possibilty. We'll see.

Once again, Ref put it more eloquently than me. This is the plan...this has been the plan...this will continue to be the plan. It's boring, yes, but this is the way you get a hedge fund off your back and return your company to profitability. The only part that is kind of gross is selling assets to free up cash. I hate to say it, because I don't like that either, but that makes sense too since debt is expensive relative to a leaseback on .5 percent of the fleet of airplanes.
The next big things I think we will see are cost cutting measures by reducing headcount. That's why I said if I were manning a cubicle in Dallas, I would maybe start showing up every day and looking very busy. The post Covid vacation is definitely over. Fortunately for pilots, we have fairly low (industry wise) pilot to airplane manning and mandatory retirements that ensure we will be relatively insulated from any cuts in the short term.

Would I be surprised by a merger announcement? Yes, but not terribly. I am pretty convinced, though, that their strategy is to stay the course and use what we already have to return to profitability by doing things other airlines have been doing for 20 years.

As always, thank you for the insight and well thought out posts. It is appreciated.

Does anyone know of any examples where being a Captain vs FO made a difference in a SLI?

It seems like it’s mainly DOH, relative seniority, and career expectations. Anything else I’m missing?

I think the only reason that would matter (and it could really impact a guy who stayed in the right seat) is if the music stops after a merger. There might not be another opportunity to upgrade for a good while. Also, if fences are a thing in a post merger agreement, that could also slow things down for a guy that chose to remain in the right seat over taking the upgrade before the merger. In the end, the global seniority will be whatever it was going to be, but seniority isn't the only factor.

In this industry, size matters. DL, UA, AA each have over 1000 airframes. They are all pretty nimble and can enter markets we only serve once or twice a day.
Frontier will ultimately aquire Spirit, United will either merge or buy assets of JetBlue.
Since size matters, there really isn't any other player left except Allegiant.
In my opinion, Southwest may have missed the boat on this one.
We don't have the hulls to grow organically to really compete.

Thanks for the prospective. Trying to figure out if it’s worth holding on to Captain if I’m caught up in the DEN and ATL displacements.

I feel it’s always better to be in the left seat if a merger occurs.

United already announced that they are not buying JetBlue via the SEC filing of an 8-K form. We still have an opportunity there with JetBlue or with Breeze. It’s also more likely the DOJ will allow us to buy/merge with JetBlue than United.
Both SWA & JetBlue could help each other business wise.

JetBlue and United would never pass a DOJ litmus test, even in the current admin. The current state of homeostasis in the big 3 network worldwide legacy airlines allows each company to compete on their own merits. Any agreement that would preserve that would have a combined UA/B6 divest so many assets that it would essentially be a useless merger. Besides, UA has already explicitly said it isn't happening.

Someone said it above, size matters. You are either a giant or in danger in this industry. There is another round of consolidation coming, but it will more than likely involve carriers with less than 500 aircraft.