SWA's Performance in Denver....Or lack of.

[NuGuy]

Sorry my post was a little "over excited", but it's silly and frustrating at the same time to read posts from these guys exclaiming how low their airline's costs are NOW. After bankruptcy's and wage and benefits cuts, everyone is ready to compete with swa. (Does anyone realize that if swa pilots made F9 wages it would mean hundreds of millions of dollars annually for swa?) Pilots excited about cost reductions and NOW being able to compete with swa seem to forget that it's on their backs. These are the reasons why the profession of being an airline pilot is full speed to the bottom.

Well, better to have been a has-been, rather than a never-was.

Nu

 

[Chest Rockwell]

Performance has been good enough to:

Avoid furloughs (so far)
Not require pay cuts from employees (so far)
Pay bills on time (and avoid bankruptcy)
Provide job security
Pay income corporate tax

 

[firstthird]

not sure what dog a delta/nwa guy has in this fight.

 

[N1atEcon]

Performance has been good enough to:

Avoid furloughs (so far)
Not require pay cuts from employees (so far)
Pay bills on time (and avoid bankruptcy)
Provide job security
Pay income corporate tax

Good point.
Everyone wants to brag about how great they are doing. It is like a guy renting on my street. The guy has two Harleys, two quads, and a new ford truck. The power gets shut off every other month and his kids wear rags for clothes. But they are doing great!

 

[contrail67]

Good point.
Everyone wants to brag about how great they are doing. It is like a guy renting on my street. The guy has two Harleys, two quads, and a new ford truck. The power gets shut off every other month and his kids wear rags for clothes. But they are doing great!

sounds like most of the SWA passengers!! JK.

 

[MILPILOT17]

sounds like most of the SWA passengers!! JK.

Guess you haven't been around the Delta gates in ATL and LAS lately?

 

[maxblast72]

The only cost advantage is labor costs. You swa haters are not smart. Swa operational costs are still the lowest in the industry. If the employees at swa decided to take a pay cut down to the new low being set by the legacies and other LCC's, I think you MIGHT see a significant difference. When the legacies and other LCC's get some balls and get a contract "close to" swa wages, then you can start talking about costs.

I am not a Southwest hater. I think Southwest has built a great company over the last 35 years and has been the only consistently profitable airline as well. However, I do think things are changing. But good companies like Southwest will change as well and will find new ways to regain consistent profitability.

It is funny how you bash all the current day LCCs for doing the same thing Southwest did for the first 25 years of their existence. Pre 9/11, legacy narrowbody CA pay was around $220/hr while Southwest was around $180/hr (or about 20% cheaper). Now Southwest CA pay is around $190/hr while the newer LCC's (Airtran, Jetblue, and Frontier) average between $150-160/hr (or about 20% cheaper). How is what the newer LCCs are doing to Southwest any different to what Southwest was doing to the legacies up to 9/11?