Southwest has a new look (pilots)

Derg said:
Even if we had a hatless leather jacket option, I'd probably still wear the standard-issue uniform.

Personally, it harkens back to the Pan Am days where you not only displayed authority, but also you represented your home country.

Narcissistic, absolutely, but you'll walk around CDG and you see sharply dressed KLM and Air France crews, all of the pilots in uniform coats, hats, and the flight attendants looking absolutely sharp, good postures, representing their airline's brand.

Now you see some US carriers, there's a guy in an unzipped leather coat, huge gut, another one with an unbuttoned blazer with his hat in his hand, and another one walking around in a civilian coat followed by a mis-mash of flight attendants in cat-hair sweaters, elastic waistband pant suits and shuffling around like they're slew-footed overweight zombies.

Maybe I'm old school but appearance does make a difference in representing your employer's brand and also when you've got to handle an issue.

My employer takes this seriously, I voluntarily signed up to work there, I'm not about to bitch about their expected appearance standard.

I want to serve Corn Dogs at the mall, but OMG I HATE THE HOT DOG ONNA STICK UNA-FIRRRRRM! :)
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It's funny, because the guys at the freight hub at 3am with the starched, perfectly pressed uniforms are the ones you gotta watch out for. :)
 
While we're talking about leather jackets.

There's an old story I heard about the straps on leather flight jackets. It was said that they were designed so rescuers could easily grab pilots and drag them out after a crash ;)

WWII pilots???
 
mshunter said:
People fly Southwest because they hate connecting through places like ATL and DFW. They offer more point to point than anyone else.
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That's a great talking point that SWA uses, and a lot of people buy into it, but it's a bunch of BS. More often than not, you'll make more connections on SWA than you will on a traditional hub-and-spoke airline. The reason is that the statistic you quote is smoke and mirrors. Yes, SWA has more point-to-point flights than anyone else. But why? Because they fly to about 4-5 cities out of every city that they serve. However, most of them are duplicates. For example, they may fly to HOU, BWI, MCO, ATL, and MDW out of one city. Those are all "point-to-point" flights. But the problem is, those are the same "points" that they'll fly to from just about every city that they serve east of the Mississippi, with a little variation here and there. So unless you're looking to go to one of SWA's "focus cities," you're screwed.

So what is the side effect of this? Since even the focus cities are "de-hubbed," meaning that they don't operate on a bank system like every other post-deregulation airline, you usually end up having to make more than one stop to get where you're going. Making three stops to get from Atlanta to Dallas is not uncommon. That's because without flights being grouped together into banks, you can't feed passengers into the focus cities and then back out to their ultimate destinations. Passengers would end up sitting around for 8 hours at a time instead of just sitting for 2 hours waiting for the next bank on Delta.

It's a horrible system. Absolutely infuriating when the weather goes bad, because a de-hubbed system is a complete nightmare when you have passengers stranded everywhere in the system instead of just at hubs.
 
ATN_Pilot said:
I certainly won't call you a fool. But I'll definitely say that Doug looks a lot sharper when he shows up to the gate wearing the double breasted blazer and a hat than a Southwest pilot does showing up with no hat, a leather jacket, and a brightly colored tie.
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Bull; I look sharp because I don't look like a ship captain; rather I look like I fly Airbus airplanes as a captain. This is a stupid discussion and I don't have time for stupidity. Good day. (Gosh getting old is fun; you get to say what you mean!)
 
lostplanetairman said:
Bull; I look sharp because I don't look like a ship captain; rather I look like I fly Airbus airplanes as a captain. This is a stupid discussion and I don't have time for stupidity. Good day. (Gosh getting old is fun; you get to say what you mean!)
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Honest question, why do you care so much? Why do you seem to need others validation that the leather coat is an okay airline look? People disagree, not everyone is going to like the same thing. But whether ATN_Pilot or any of the other non-leather coat peeps like it or not. They're not negatively affecting your money. Seriously. Don't stroke out dude.
 
Maximillian_Jenius said:
Honest question, why do you care so much? Why do you seem to need others validation that the leather coat is an okay airline look? People disagree, not everyone is going to like the same thing. But whether ATN_Pilot or any of the other non-leather coat peeps like it or not. They're not negatively affecting your money. Seriously. Don't stroke out dude.
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I don't think he's stroking out. However implying someone to be unprofessional personally because they do happen to wear the leather jacket, is going beyond simple disagreement.
 
I HATE DEER STAG SHOES!

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Come at me, bro! :) :) :)
 
ATN_Pilot said:
I don't want to arrive early. I want to be treated like a human being instead of cattle no matter what time I show up, as long as I'm there sooner than 10 prior when they start giving seats away to standbys.
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Hasn't SW gone to assigning your place in line to every passenger? I have only flown them a handful of times the last 12-18 months. Every time I've been assigned a number, like B29, A12 etc. Then you wait next to the station with your number on it and board in alpha-numerical order. It's like this at all SW cities now, right?
 
PositionAndHold said:
Hasn't SW gone to assigning your place in line to every passenger? I have only flown them a handful of times the last 12-18 months. Every time I've been assigned a number, like B29, A12 etc. Then you wait next to the station with your number on it and board in alpha-numerical order. It's like this at all SW cities now, right?
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Yes, but it's assigned when you check in, so it's still a mad dash to be the first person to check in 24 hours prior to departure. And besides, a place in line is not the same thing as an assigned seat.
 
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