Your qol will be 1000X better at SWA in BWI

Agreed if he doesn't care about what he flies, I don't know why he would even consider coming here. QOL, pay, retirement, and they get profit sharing, there is no contest SWA wins hands down.

As far as retirement, SWA is 15 DC, plus profit sharing, has averaged (firmly, but no guarantee for the future) above 10%, so about 25% if you don’t contribute. NK is 12, going to 15% in 2022, so definitely less.

As far as QOL, it really depends what you need. If you don’t need to be as flexible after you get your schedule, SWA better. Lines are built to average 17 days off, with 80+ hours credit, 220 - 250 hr TAFB. NK 15, 74, 250 - 290. (before PBS, so not sure yet).
If you want to drop to zero, turn your whole schedule around after the award, or do red-eye turns to Central America NK is the place to be.

Even if all things were equal you don’t commute when you don’t have to. He lives in BWI. You always choose the airline with a base in the city you want to live unless it’s a regional

All good input. Thx. What about upgrade times? At 45+. I have to figure how much money I’d have the potential to earn over the 20yrs I have left. For example.. if upgrade is reasonably around 10-15yrs at SWA how would that stack up against any carrier with a 5-7yr upgrade? If you upgrade at 5-7 years at a higher pay rate then you have 13-15yrs at CA pay rather than 5-10 yrs.. does that make sense?

Upgrade times are a shot in the dark. I always calculated upgrade times based on no-growth, and then age 65 happened. For an upgrade at NK you are looking at a pilot group that is about 80% younger than you, so for upgrade look at doubling in size or about 5 years at 15% growth, but that is based on the order coming in and all the deliveries happening. For SWA there are more retirements but less growth, and my best guess would be 10 years. If nothing much changes contract wise you still would easily out-earn at SWA compared to NK IMO.

I disagree. WN has peaked and is fighting extreme headwinds on CASM. If NK continues to improve as an airline and as the pricing difference becomes more widely known I see NK growing to 300-500+. NK will grow more as a percentage than WN can anymore. Throw in an age 67 or 'as able' and you could really shoot yourself in the foot at WN if you're betting on retirements. Not to mention the 73 sucks.

An in base southwest FO can easily make as much as a commuting spirit captain and be home more. This is fact. So basically you’d be making your spirit captain pay from year two on at southwest and after you upgrade at Southwest it’s all gravy. 45 isn’t that old

Why does the 737 suck and what does that have to do with pay and retirement? Just curious...

It doesn't.

What does factor in is a mature airline growing 3-5% YOY versus a young airline growing 15-20% YOY. WN is also the leader of the pack on NB compensation and I think they'll have a harder time with higher percentage gains as the economy turns sour versus NK. We still have significant room to improve in the next go around and have more headroom on our CASM ex to negotiate than they do.

That said, being in base with a crappy carrier is far better than commuting to great carrier. Commuting sucks and I'd put living in base as an extremely important factor. If the OP wants to live in BWI than I'd go all out for WN as I can't see them ever closing BWI even if one is forced to be shoehorned into a 73 for their career.