I mention I’m 30 in my original post and then living in IND. ORD works great for me!

 

WB flying isn’t for everyone, if you can’t sleep on planes or manage your tiredness/sleep then you’ll be miserable. A lot of your overnight will be spent sleeping or staying awake to sleep again. I’m on the WB and I wouldn’t trade it for anything. One leg, very relaxed , trips are basically two nights away rather than 3 whole days (depart late arrive relatively early), get to walk around a few hours and have great food.

with your time left I’d make the jump, if you can handle the paycut and schedule change. You’re likely to upgrade faster here than at swa , what’s upgrade there now? 8 years? You can probably upgrade here now around year 2-3, one extra year before your swa time, that can make up a paycut and give you options. Worst case you hate WB flying you go to the Airbus try something new, maybe 756 fleet, upgrade etc. Lots of choices.

 

ORD has some pretty good 787 flying (no 777 currently). Apparently the economics of the 78 are excellent for ORD-Euro flying and they are planning on significant expansion once the new terminals come online (with more WB gates).
As I’m sure you know, plans are worth about the cost of the paper they are printed on in this business.

WB flying is awesome. Is it so awesome you should give up 3 years of seniority at a career destination where you are already driving to work… 🤷‍♂️

 

The new terminal and gates are YEARS behinds schedule.

 

they’ve barely even dug up any ground and last I heard it was like $2B over cost.

 

Next year's UA hiring is forecast to be around 1k and he would be about halfway through that with a spring class date. Upgrades are at 4-5 yrs now and he will be looking at reserve for a year or so.
Basically timelines are going back to historical norms. I personally would not leave almost 4yrs seniority at a place where I was already driving to work. However, 30 is young enough to absorb some setbacks if WB is that important to you.

 

The problem is, I don’t know if it’s that important to me. WB flying would be cool and I would love to have the options, but if worst case scenario I jump to United and things change in the industry and I get stuck as a 737 FO for a while…that’s what I’m debating. Versus I’m Year 3 potentially Year 4 at SWA as a 73 FO.

if I can go to United and potentially upgrade to CA quick or get to WB FO in the next 2yrs I don’t think it becomes much of an issue. The issue is if I go and that stuff doesn’t become possible anymore. I guess it also depends on how fast United can get me in class. I think if they can get me in next spring it’s still viable, but if it’s late summer or fall…then I probably should reconsider. Thoughts?

 

Do you want to do what you’re doing now for the next 35 years, some of which will be from the left seat in the same plane, going to the same places? That was my deciding factor.

 

and here’s another thing, you’re movement at swa will be based on growth and retirements. Even if you don’t ever touch a widebody, people senior to will, there’s almost always movement going going on here, 1 captain retiring off a widebody creates a ripple effect.

btw widebody reserve in base is probably one of the easiest jobs I’ve ever done.

 

One thing to note, if your decision depends on a quick upgrade or a quick move into a WB seat, you should know that the days of super fast upgrades are gone (for now), and we're really overstaffed on most WBFO seats. Be prepared to wait a few years for either of those seats (NBCA or WBFO) to become attainable. Unless Boeing gets their ****** together and starts delivering airplanes.

That said, if you stay at SWA then you'll never fly a WB. So you just have to decide how important that option is to you...