[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.