It ain't Herb's airline anymore that's for sure. I also believe that the real sticks in the mud are the hold overs from the "fly it like a 200" era and not the new blood coming on the property.

Really? I jump on SWA all the time, and am never treated ANYTHING but wonderfully. Much of the time I'm pre-boarded, treated like gold by the flight attendants, and when I'm up in the actual have great conversations with the pilots. When I purchase tickets for my girlfriend (no WAY she can get anywhere standby these days on my own passes), I always buy them on SWA and they treat her equally as well. Sure, there are always a few surly folks at every airline, but as a general rule I find SWA to be one of the very best. I wish we could treat them as well as they treat us when they come over to visit us at UAL

Just as a public FYI.... how do you get pre-boarded as an offline JS? The ONLY time the ATL agents let you do this is if it looks like you'll be on the actual seat and then they let you go down and check in, otherwise I've asked a couple of times and I get the "back of the line you little ingrate" look and of course that's where I go and patiently wait for my free ride. Not complaining but just curious how you pull the early board off with the gate agents?

Why do you constantly feel the need to justify the fact you're not at a legacy by making little jabs at them? You enjoy SWA. Cool. We get it. Good for you. SWA is a good airline.

But to say 15k AA pilots won't go to bat for you is nonsense. Every pilot group has their 5%. SWA does too.

Are we counting the original post as a jab or....

In 10+ yrs flying AA Connection I can count on 1 hand the number of times a AA pilot refused to push until all the jumpseaters/nonrevs were on board. More times than I can count I've had AA guys try and circumvent the priority listing to get ahead of express guys on their own equipment with the excuse being, "I'm mainline and you're not".

The ONLY times I was treated as an equal on an AA plane was when the crew was TWA. They'd put you in 1st regardless of what seat the nAAzi gate agent gave you on a wide open flight, make sure you were taken care of by the FA's with food, and would make sure they didn't leave without you if they knew you were waiting to get on.

That's not to say there's not nAAtive pilots that aren't top notch....I just never ran into very many of them in ORD or LGA. Don't even get me started on the AAgents in STL...

Don't know about ATL, but in the places I have used SWA jump seats I just stand near the podium by the gate and they almost always wave me down when they get done boarding the wheelchairs and the deadheading Southwest crews. LAS, ONT, SAN, SMF, AUS, SAT, PHL are the stations I have used.
To the original posters assertion about SWA morale, I agree with the guy a couple of posts prior: these are some of the nicest people in the airline industry period. Gate agents, cabin crew, pilots included.

Some stations are good. BUR, OAK stand out. Some are bad LAX, ATL in my experience. There is one strange dude in OAK that makes you board in your group. When i see him working the flight I get a Cockpit. Then have to get his attention to board. This is at the most commuter friendly airport in the whole system.

There are bad apples everywhere. But to say that AA has better service, you must have either:

a) encountered an outlier phenomenal AA service.
b) encountered an outlier bad service from SWA - again far from the norm.
c) trolling.

I will say that some people carry sour grapes internally from years of protracted contract negotiations, but I've never seen it manifest itself in how we treat our customers or each other.

If you have the jumpseat pass (Cockpit) then you are required to pre board per the ground ops manual. It helps speed up the flow and gets the awkward "where do I put my bag" out of the way. If there are seats in the back (or even if they say there aren't) I always tell jumpseaters to head on back and get comfy and we will call if we need you.
The problem that a lot of commuters run into is that the CSAs are either too lazy or too hurried to run CASS, so they just print a boarding pass. Now they aren't required to let you preboard, though most old school ops agents will.
I work for SWA and I always ask them if I can please have the cockpit so that I can preboard and introduce myself. I have gotten a few sideways glances, but it takes less than a minute and they know it is the right thing to do.
ATL is possibly the worst station for nonrevving of any sort. I get treated better by Delta than I do by AirTran...I mean southwest.