Great shoots...NOT so corny of a story....keep the pictures and the stories coming

Southwest has one of the worst reps in aviation - the pilots that is

Slamming aircraft on landings (that is good to a certain extent), taxiing in F1 style, rapid descents with speedbrakes to very low altitudes - and the list goes on.

SWA are real hot shot guys eh?
 

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If the company line is to save time and money .... and the pilots risk life and limb to do it ..... then the flying is unsafe. 

Otherwise great pics 

I agree with Silver, they are not risking lives or flying unsafe.
Kinda like driving on the highway in 70mph instead of the legal 65mph

Every way to save some cash - the low cost airlines will find them, but they'd never break any regulations.


Are there any Autothrottles installed on SWA's 737 yet?
In my book about 737, it says that SWA opted to go without it  ???

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I fly for Southwest Virtual, at www.virtualswa.com ; It's alot of fun, the only drawback is that all of the planes painted for Southwest right now are either really grainy paints of the default 737-400, or they are of one of the FFX 737-300,-500, or -700.  They don't have payload stations set so you can change how many passengers you're loading, no Virtual Cockpit, and somebody forgot to paint the inside, like the pilot's faces and the door.

And "Airline" is a pretty cool show, don't you think?

Okay, I can't figure out how to quote more than one thing, so here we go:

"Southwest has one of the worst reps in aviation - the pilots that is 

Slamming aircraft on landings (that is good to a certain extent), taxiing in F1 style, rapid descents with speedbrakes to very low altitudes - and the list goes on.

SWA are real hot shot guys eh?"

To Nexus:

The vast majority of times I've flown are on Southwest, as from my little town of Clovis, you can drive to Albuquerque and catch a cheap Southwest flight to the West, or you can take a shorter drive to Lubbock and fly to the east on Continental.  In all of my experience, I have never experienced a hard landing on Southwest, even in the terrible turbulence we went through on a flight into Albuquerque last October.  Now we can examine a certain safety record.  In my 14 years of life, there has only been one Southwest incident that I can remember, when they decided to park at a gas station in California instead of at the gate.  No lives were lost.  Tell me if there are any other incidents that you can think off.

"great pics.
Prob find alot of southwest pilots are Ex navy, which would also explain the hard landings as for F1 style taxi'ing  a ryan air plane did that in manchester a few weeks ago they went so fast and onto an active runway without clearance, a departing A320 had to slam its breaks on full to avoid hitting it. Just because the pilots for this low cost airline wanted to save a couple of minutes a day, they almost killed 150+ people I wont say southwest are like that i have never had the pleausure of flying with them  so i dont know, but it wouldnt surprise me"

Well, I don't know about the rest of them, but my uncle joined the Air Force (don't know of them making hard landings) when he was 18, did his 20 years service, and then joined Southwest.  Right now, he is a senior captain, gets to chose where he flies, and works 4 days out of the week.  Can't complain about a job like that.  And about the F1 style taxiing,  he came to stay with us in Clovis once, and we drove him back to Lubbock where he had to fly out somewhere.  I watched him get pushed back by the tug, and he made alot smoother taxiing in that 737 than I do in the 152 I train in at our airport.   And besides, Southwest is cool cause their flight attendants say funny things like "There may be 50 ways to leave your lover, but there are only 4 ways to leave this plane."  And they have yummy peanuts, too!

About 90% of my air travel history has been with Southwest Airlines.  I travel along the west coast a handful of times every year and I always choose Southwest.  Although I have experienced some of those interesting, exciting, and fun approaches, I cannot recall a time when we made an extremely hard landing, slamming down onto the runway, not even during any nasty weather.

Because Southwest's pilots like to make a somewhat higher and steeper descent, that does not mean they slam the plane onto the runway doing so.  Chances are, hard landings experienced on Southwest have no relation to their descending techniques and are no different than situations that might cause a hard landing on ANY airline.

It is true that in Southwest Airlines' 30+ years of service, they only have one blemish on their safety record and yes, that was the incident in Burbank California in which the aircraft overran the runway back in 2000.  Yes, it was linked to pilot error, but that was the only time they broke the rules and well, they payed for it. 

And please, lets not compare Southwest with Ryanair.  There just is no comparison...Ryanair has one of the worst reputations of any airline in the world for various reasons, and Southwest sits on top of the LCC world.  They are the ultimate LCC and their success is matched by no other.

I agree than Ryanair has a rather poor reputation, and rightfully so.
But I think Easy Jet could be a good comparison to SWA.

Easy Jet are enjoying great success, and has expanded immensely the last years, acquiring companies like Deutche BA and GO!

I only fly SAS though