Southwest Airlines Threw Shade At American. Their Pilots Clapped Back.

American Airlines has added change fees back to some international-originating itineraries. Southwest Airlines – which doesn’t have change fees, but also doesn’t do long haul international flying, reacted on twitter.

That’s when the Southwest Airlines pilots union showed up. Maybe change fees aren’t Southwest’s ‘cup of tea’ but the pilots said theirs isn’t “selling more than 4,000 flights a day in June when you were only staffed for 3,800. But you do you @southwestair.”

Airlines across the board have struggled to operate their full schedules. In fact, though, Southwest hasn’t scheduled 4000 flights a day for June since back in February. Southwest, like other airlines, trimmed its schedule in advance based on how it saw demand developing as well as what it felt it could operate.

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  1. @Daniel And? The union’s claim was factual and legitimate. SWA has had a challenging (horrible) year mostly because of their schedule screw up.

  2. Unions killed the whole US railroad industry. Railroad industry never be able to make it back, all foreign manufacturers now!

    Now they are coming after aviation industry!!

    Unions even have guts using Railway Labor Act, which they used for killing railroad industry, against airlines!

    Shame on disgusting unions!

  3. How about they sell and staff for 3000 daily flights? Would that make the union happy?

  4. Unions, “too many flights!”
    Also unions, “how dare they cut flights, management doesn’t care about jerbs!”

  5. Oh OK SWA !!! To bad you don’t actually fly anywhere !! But you do crappy YOU !

  6. I’m no fan of unions, and have been screwed royally by unions more than once.
    But I’m wise enough to know they are a necessary evil, like lawyers, police and big pharma.
    The may be guilty of being immoral or unconscionable, but without unions there would be no overtime, no sick time, no vacation time, no workman’s comp. Women would be fired for getting fat or getting married. Families would become destitute if an employee got sick or died at his job due to the negligence of his employer.
    Life would not be decent at all without unions.

  7. AA is trash. Wouldn’t fly them unless they were the only one providing service to my destination.

  8. Railway Labor act is what forces a pilot to work more than 8 hrs a day or 40 hrs a week. That could be 24 hrs at some of the unknown freight carriers. Don’t act like unions like that act. It’s horrific what airlines got away with, even with the unions. By the way- pilots only get paid while acft are moving, not giving you directions to the toilet.

  9. @Jim, really…. hope you enjoy Bonanza bus to London….. SWA (WN = Were Nuts) flys to where? ok they are the tourist airline….. can not wait to get into a tube for 6 hours with kids! Once they cancel your flight you are Screwed since they do not Interlink with anyone and you may have to wait days to get another flight.

    your just mad AA puts you next to the WashRoom each time….. keeps you with your friends.

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