United had hedge fund board members for a minute and they wanted to close iad and lax. This was 8 years ago and they almost had their way. The one woman from Boston knew nothing of airlines. Short term pumps the stock with zero long term outlook. This is where swa is right now but the hedge funds have a better foot hold. The cusp of change but change coming from what viewpoint? The employees are ****ed at swa for a long list of reasons and the old southwest and their family atmosphere is about to be entirely gone.

Actually they were very close to closing DEN, LAX & IAD under the end of Smisek’s tenure early into Oscar’s regime. It wasn’t just the hedge funds behind this.
It was a common theme on Wall street re: UAL post merger. I believe you are referring to Julia Haywood, she became pretty high up in UAL management.

https://www.travelweekly.com/Travel-News/Airline-News/Julia-Haywood-steps-down-from-United-post

Oscar fired Julia and put an end to the proposed plan to close LAX, DEN & IAD. Shortly thereafter Scott came over from AA as our President.

FYI - For perspective for the newbies or those of us with selective memories.

Our bottom pilot hired pre pandemic was at the end of Feb 2020 and was seniority number (just over) 13,000.

On paper during the pandemic we were supposed to furlough 3000-4000 pilots (according to who you talked too or which flight ops or crew resources bulletin you read).

We fortunately didn’t furlough anyone. We didn’t hire from the beginning of 2020 till the end of 2021. Since we started hiring again. That last new hire in early 2020 that was around 13,000 is now around 10,800 out of 17,500 pilots. We have hired about 6700 pilots since the end of 2021.

One could make a very valid argument that United came very close to shutting down & liquidating during the post 9/11 bankruptcy.

So just remember this is a very volatile industry. No one’s on top or bottom forever. Anything is possible.

It sounds like you are saying the OP needs to weigh the best case scenario at WN vs. worst case scenario at UAL. Either way his or her DECISION INVOLVES RISK. There is obviously speculation involved as well. To some extent the individual needs to think that they are investing in leadership. Which management team gives you the most confidence? But even then management team rarely are in for the long term at least not as long as we pilots tied to a seniority system are.

We know the UAL growth plans, but as we know in this game that can all go POOF, Southwest could explode with growth and widebodies and be comparable to DL, AA, and UAL.......

The latter and former scenarios happening concurrently are about as likely as SFO-Pyongyang in the 787.

If you read your article it points out that Kirby was hired two weeks after Haywood. Kirby is obviously responsible for both Haywood leaving and discarding the IAD, DEN and/or LAX dehubbing idea so UA was never that close to implementing that stupid idea.

I disagree. Had Smisek not been fired it was closer to happening than not.

It was Julia Haywood's idea not Smisek's who had been gone for a year by the time she showed up.

Started hiring with may 2021 classes :)

Yep.

https://www.fapa.aero/pilot-hiring-history

Possibly true, but Smisek was very susceptible to the mantra of Wall Street. Don’t kid yourself, if he wasn’t fired he wouldn’t have pushed us down that path. He was on record numerous times as anti DEN and LAX. He gave up CAL’s old gates in terminal 6 (LAX) right after the merger. Kirby wouldn’t have loved those gates in LAX today just like the the gates Smisek gave up in JFK.

I stand corrected. Would be far easier to look this stuff up by simply looking at the seniority list. However since the UAL MEC made sure all DOH was removed from the seniority list after the SLI. Now you have to cross reference a U number on Shares JA screen (boarding date) to see a pilots DOH.