My first thought goes to the men and women doing a fantastic job on the other side of the world. That includes a lot of friends, relatives and family members (my brother is in the army tasked with "defending" the supply lines from Basrah to Baghdad) who are on active duty or have been activated by thier respective guard and reserve units.
I would have hoped LL would have said classes TBD in MAY, but I guess that future classes are just a big question mark (with only 3 weeks notice). In light of the recent training decisions it seems SWA has figured out a way to fly the schedule sans 80+ guys. That should be good news for the profitability of SWA, not so good for us poolies (in the short term, because a profitable SWA means jobs in the future). Or maybe SWA has concluded these 80+ pilots will be back very soon.
By the way, here are the latest 1st quarter estimates:
The following are the First Call consensus estimates for first-quarter per- share results of the nation's nine major airlines:
COMPANY 1Q 2003 EPS YEAR-AGO
ESTIMATE EPS
AMR ($5.87) ($3.53)
UAL (11.12) ( 8.81)
Delta Air ( 3.23) ( 2.90)
Northwest ( 3.13) ( 2.01)
Continental ( 2.35) ( 1.79)
Southwest .03 .03
US Airways ( 2.65) ( 4.22)
America West ( 1.22) ( 1.41)
Alaska Air ( 1.87) ( 1.30)
In anycase, let us be more concerned about the troops overseas who are fighting the bad guys in Baghdad and hope for their safe return.