Very true. I’ve ridden their jumpseat. Frankly those of us fully vested in the safety systems everywhere in the rest of the airline industry wonder how SWA has put off a catastrophic event for this long. “Threat and error management” and formal SMS systems tell us that unless SWA changes their cockpit culture it is only a matter of time until it is changed for them. If it is changed for them, heads will roll at the FAA certificate management office that oversees SWA as well. The NTSB will finally get the attention of the public, and only then the media will ask, “what the heck is going on at Southwest?” Something pilots at other carriers having been asking for quite a while.
A couple of years ago I witnessed an SWA jet do a visual downwind to a left base to land at an airport in Florida — Tampa, I think — with a large, fast-moving cell directly over the airport. They were in the clear on downwind so could see the cell, but they flew the left ‘visual’ into the virga that completely obscured the field, with lightning coming out of the bottom less than a mile away.
They reported wind shear of +/- 20 knots on final.
I’ll never forget seeing that — they’re an accident waiting to happen.
I said virga, but technically it was probably heavy rain, since it didn’t dissipate completely before reaching the ground.