I am not in SW and I am not an analyst juggling metrics.
Two points on that hit piece against SW pilots, and a repeat of one pithy criticism made in the comments.
In fact if I had to summarize the above economic argument with a one liner, it’s that Southwest pilots want to be paid Boeing 777 wages to fly Boeing 737s.
This is one of those "figures lie and liars figure" bits of intellectual dishonesty that was called out by a few comments after the piece. When you assess his writing style, you find him treating "pilots" as a commodity, not as people. There's another working point that could use thoughtful consideration. Is it hours or sorties/sectors that demand the most from pilots? If I fly three sectors in 8 hours, or one sector in 8 hours, regardless of the cost efficiencies of the wide body (and there are many) the value the pilots provide goes beyond the author's narrow metric because each and every take off and landing represents a risk to the company, which is generally mitigated / prevented by the flight deck crew. They add value on each and every evolution in the terminal phase, two per sector, that he will not and cannot put into his metrics, most likely because he may understand dollars, but he doesn't understand flying.
At the end of the days, there is a strong moral hazard in allowing a group of employees to vote on the continuing employment of the people that set their wages.
This man does not understand why unions exists, nor does he apparently understand the term
accountability. A very colonialist attitude toward labor. People who work for unaccountable managers get screwed. (That does not only apply to the air transport industry).
Pilots do not produce available seat miles. Therefore, most of this is not true. Sorry.
Interesting point on a flaw in the analytical model being used.