[fiftyfifty]

In some ways this whole industry creates it's own problems because airlines don't want to get pay to get their pilots certified for new planes. So Boeing tried to engineer their way out of the problem and hack in some changes to make an entirely new design fly like an old 737-800. Southwest Airlines was a major contributor to this as the largest purchaser of 737s in the world, because you know, god forbid Southwest's pilots had to get certified to fly a new plane once every 50 years.

[tivert]

> Southwest Airlines was a major contributor to this as the largest purchaser of 737s in the world, because you know, god forbid Southwest's pilots had to get certified to fly a new plane once every 50 years.

I would guess Southwest's goal is more of a staff flexibility thing: if all their pilots are certified to fly all their planes, scheduling could be much easier and more effective. I don't know anything about airline management or pilot certification, but my guess is pilots are typically certified to only fly one kind of aircraft at a time, and don't typically maintain multiple certifications.

However, as much efficiency that strategy may have gained them over the last several decades, it's not one that's reasonable to maintain anymore.

[seanmcdirmid]

Airline customers don't want pay more for tickets, its not like airlines are swimming in money to take that on themselves.

[jlbooker]

They make millions of dollars every year. They can afford the training, they'd just rather have better metrics and not pay for expensive training, just to make the stock look better.

[seanmcdirmid]

The also spend millions of dollars every year. I don't think many airline companies are actually very profitable right now. Take a look at any airline stock for the last 10 years, they were at a plateau before the pandemic, they are just at a lower plateau after.

[robjan]

I don't know much about US airlines but Cathay Pacific made a record breaking profit this year and they aren't even at full capacity https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-03-13/cathay-pa...

[seanmcdirmid]

They must have other problems then because they are doing more poorly than US-based airline stocks:

https://www.google.com/search?q=Cathay+Pacific+stock&oq=Cath...

[robjan]

That's not really how the stock market works. Also Cathay pays profit to its shareholders in the form of dividends.

[jlbooker]

From Southwest 4Q and Full Year 2023 results [1]:

> Full year 2023 operating revenues were a record $26.1 billion, a 9.6 percent increase, year-over-year

> Full year net income of $498 million, or $0.81 per diluted share

I'll say again... They have _plenty_ of money (record-breaking, even!) to train their pilots on the differences between two aircraft models. It's not that they can't afford it, they'd just rather not spend the money unless absolutely forced to, because a better stock price is their primary goal/motivation.

[1] https://www.southwestairlinesinvestorrelations.com/news-and-...

[seanmcdirmid]

They must be bleeding somewhere because their stock is doing horribly. Record profits and yet investors are not optimistic about it for some reason. Also, I'm not sure if we are taking into account inflation? Like I recorded record income this year personally, but I don't feel very rich. If you look at their google page:

https://www.google.com/search?q=southwest+airline+profit&oq=...

Look at March 2023, they are way up until you hit the bottom : operating income is really down and they are bleeding cash like crazy.