I think the type rating requirement should go away. In 3 years years we will have the Max and folks will still be going to Higher Power to get their -200 type rating. Which is going to be useless. I can understand requiring a type if a company hires street captains or is a relatively young company with fast upgrade times. Neither case exists at SWA. Lots of companies start out hiring with greater restrictions and then relax them as the company matures. jetBlue required 121 PIC time in an aircraft that weighed 20,0000lbs or more when they first started hiring. That requirement is gone. SWA has a great training program and first class facilities. They have trained up APDs as a result of the AT acquisition. It's time to move on and drop the type.
I don't think anyone here disagrees with you on this,... with the possible exception of General Lee. If we got rid of that rating as one of our hiring minimums, then he'd have one less stupid buzzword to throw out when anyone disagrees with him.
About anything.
Bubba