Sorry Jim, I've got to call absolute and total BS on that one. There may be some idiot that would sit on a jumpseat and tell the pilots of the airline generous enough to give them a free ride that they would deserve nothing more than a staple if acquired, but that is not what you are asserting. We all have idiots in our ranks that say ridiculous stuff, but you saying you personally witnessed many spouting this crap is laughable at best. I work with these folks on a daily basis and I have never heard "many" say this so I find it very difficult to believe that "many" would express these views to you in a "hostile" environment.
Ask the guy that was your LAS Asst. Chief pilot at that time about the Hawaiian 767 FO that said if he could, he'd open the main cabin door and throw his ass out into the Pacific for telling me that "Hawaiian is a small airline that has nowhere near the career of a SWA pilot and like Air Tran, should be stapled to the bottom of our list if we ever bought you." He's one example you could track down if you wanted a name.
Ok, many equals 5 or 6 in about an 18 month period. It usually started off with a conversation about your merger and then after hearing about "don't make the money (profits) of SWA" or "small airline" etc. means Air Tran pilots deserved nothing my Captain or I would ask what they think would happen if SWA and Hawaiian were in the same situation. About half would say "I don't know enough about Hawaiian to answer that" but the other 5 or 6 said we'd get treated exactly like they wanted to treat Air Tran. I don't think any of them viewed our cockpit as "hostile", more like "neutral". And the 5 or 6 were initially clueless enough not to notice when it went from neutral to hostile.
I also listened to many SWA pilots while riding the SWA jump seat talk among themselves about about the merger and the venom they spewed was amazing. They would sometime try to drag me into these conversations but I was smart enough to just say "glad it's not my problem, hope it works out for you" which somehow was normally taken as my agreeing with them.
I doubt that you had many conversations, if any, while working daily with your fellow SWA pilots about merging with/acquiring Hawaiian during your Air Tran SLI conversations. So as you claim I'm sure you never heard "many" say this. But I'm equally heard you heard "many" of your fellow SWA pilots say similar things solely about Air Tran. Your fellow SWA pilots said it on this board daily.
Call BS all you want and believe me or not. I don't care and I don't plan on getting into a useless string of replies where we each try and prove the other is a liar. It's not worth the time or effort. I know what I heard and I saw the same crap on here. I went from thinking SWA was an awesome place to work to a place I would avoid unless I had no other major airline option.
Funny, General Lee was right despite all the denials from the SWA pilots on this board. I just jumped from STL to LAS yesterday. I was talking with the crew and the Captain asked "How are things at Hawaiian?" After telling him the latest here, I asked "How are things at SWA?" He said he knows of 4 FOs who have recently left to go to Delta and then the FO chimed in "there are a couple leaving for AA and United too". They blamed "no upgrade in sight", "changing culture", and "bad management". General Lee said this was happening/would happen and all the SWA pilots on here slammed him for daring to think someone would not want to work at SWA let alone leave.