Southwest to ‘trim headcount’ after growth in costs

[funnyman12]

Longetivity also plays a part. The 140 pilots hired this year were hired for pilots having additional vacation time. Over the next few years that wilk akso have a snall effect.

 

[Lear70]

I did some research and math. My exact prediction is that after the integration is complete we will see a net loss of 70 airframes from where we are today for a fleet total of 624 vs the 694ish we have on property now. I think we will keep 100 classics with the evolve interior and thats it. So a net loss of 68 classics and 88 717s offset by 86 Boeing deliveries. That leaves us 700ish overstaffed plus the 400ish overstaffed we will be from the increased pilot utilization that Lear mentioned leaves us overstaffed by 1100 offset roughly 300 retirements leaves us overstaffed by 800 or so.

We'll see.

FWIW the orders that were deferred are supposed to pick back up in 2015, which would make sense as replacement aircraft for the Classics starting to go away.

My prediction is that we get the 86 replacement airplanes through the integration, keeping the fleet flat, then the classics that they aren't going to retrofit start going away at the same pace that new deliveries come on property, letting attrition take care of the overstaffing issue on the pilot side of the house, and by 2017, the dust will finally settle from integration issues and we will have roughly the same fleet size we have now.

The big question then is: will we grow or will this company stay stagnant? My hope is that we grow, but my mindset is prepared for Southwest to become more like a legacy carrier with only 1-2% growth annually over time (some years flat, some years 5-6%). Plan for the worst, hope for the best.

We can all have this thread to look back on in a few years and see who wins the bet. Anyone want to put a bottle of Balvenie 12 Year Single Malt Caribbean Cask on it?

 

[Lear70]

This post is spot on. I think of the FA's. If we have attrition on the pilot side what about the 10,000 plus FA's?

I think you're going to see the loss of quite a few ATL F/A's as the integration process happens and more and more of them have to commute out to LAS, PHX, or OAK for long periods of time.

We have a lot of F/A's who treat this as a day job, they have kids and bid day trips only or only stand-ups so they can get home every day. Take that away and they will likely quit. Talked to one of them last night, she took this job for health benefits for her kids (one is quite ill) and travel benefits for her and her husband and she won't commute so when she has to go over, she will likely resign.

With our system still primarily set up as a hub-and-spoke system, we still have the flexibility to do things like that, but I'm sure that will go away when ATL opens on the SWA side. I bet the F/A situation will take care of itself over the first few years after the integration is done.