Perspective and (non-revisionist) History

[Lear70]

Most feel that we have been lied to and blackmailed. Some feed hungrily on the purple teet.Our livelihood was subtley threatened. That's a difficult thing to accept for most people. Especially when that message is followed by a very real financial and quality of life degradation. Followed by a complete denial of any responsibility.

The back-and-forth has certainly been hard. From the heady days after the first announcement, the first SWAPA parties, the warm words from Southwest management and Southwest pilots of how great the culture was, to the initial struggles with the Process Agreement (which was expected), then its solution, then to the unavoidable conflict that surrounded SIA 1 leading towards arbitration, then,,, suddenly,,, just what you said. The threats came out in polar opposition to everything else we'd been told... except by a few people on here.

Many will always struggle with that apparent dichotomy between the philosophy of the culture that is preached and the reality that truly exists and that we have experienced. You may compartmentalize it in order to do your job without driving yourself crazy, but it'll never truly be forgotten.

Maybe that was their intent all along. To put the permanent fear of being on the wrong side of management into people. Who knows. But it's going to take some time for it to stop dominating your thoughts. For most of us it will be several years AFTER the integration, when our QoL has been recovered, and upgrade is again somewhere on the horizon. Until then, it's hard to look at where you're at now, where you'll be on the other side of the partition, and try not to be p*ssed off about it.

Like you, I think of my friends still stuck at Kalitta and those at PCL facing job loss, and it keeps me from being TOTALLY absorbed by all of this, but you still know the change in your life is coming, and negative change is never easy. Time and a LOT of company growth, the only things that help heal the divide. Such is life, and life's not so bad, just irritating right now.

 

[fam62c]

There aren't going to be an widebody aircraft at SW unless they introduce a 737WB. The routes for those airplanes are hard to come by have been taken by others; SW would have no advantage playing in that league. The only possible exception would be if they purchased another carrier that did that sort of thing but short of Hawaiian LCC and AMR were the last chances. SW's big advantage all these years was not trying to be all things to all people and sticking with what they were good at. SW is a domestic powerhouse with some near international potential. Their strength will be in concentrating their power and learning to squeeze smaller competitors out of business by drowning them with frequency, they missed some opportunities to do this when they had the chance. The danger to SW is a successful airline with lower costs that can become the next SW if allowed to get to critical mass. It won't be AT because SW did the logical thing in that case.

 

[madjack]

I personally think the infusion of the AAI group into SWAPA/SWA is a great thing.... But most junior RSW FOs I fly with do not...