I have a friend who is a senior pilot/flight instructor for a major airline. He said two interesting things recently after more than 2 beers:
“Southwest is THE worst airline in the industry.”
“My biggest challenge as an instructor is that these planes are so reliable that pilots sleepwalk through their flights and when they’ve flown for 35 years and one day something goes wrong, they aren’t ready to immediately react because it’s such a shock. I show them what can happen using the flight simulators, but they know they are in a simulator and something will be set to go wrong.”
Sorry, but I LOVE Southwest...particularly their luggage/changes policies (no charge for either, and the changes policy has saved me many thousands). Their safety record is as good as any other, at least as far as I can tell.
I do agree on the sleep walking - pilots are forced to spend most of their time figuring out how the stupid computers are supposed to work, instead of learning how to actually FLY an airplane...and yes, when things go wrong, they’re clueless.