From his office at the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association headquarters in Dallas on Thursday, Capt. Tom Nekouei reflected on his life as a commercial pilot — even as he and nearly 10,000 of his fellow flyers prepare to strike in the wake of failed contract negotiations.
“I’ve been with Southwest for 18 years, but I’ve been flying for about 30 years,” he said. “In the 90s, I started with Great Lakes Airlines, which was a commuter at the time. Then I worked for Air Wisconsin, which was a regional carrier, before Southwest.”
The second vice president of SWAPA, Nekouei, 50, estimated he has accumulated 20,000 to 21,000 flight hours in his career.
“I’m based in Denver, but I work as second vice president in Dallas at the headquarters,” he said. “I’m in Dallas quite often — three to four days a week — so I don’t get to fly that much anymore. I do fly as many chances as I can get.”
In Dallas, nearly a year after the holiday meltdown that disrupted travel for millions, Nekouei said he believes Southwest is still unprepared for a similar weather event.
“We had a winter storm and the inability of the company to deal with severe weather events. I don’t know if we’re going to have another one. The ability of the company to deal with them, we don’t feel has been addressed and improved. We proved a couple of weeks ago in Denver the company struggled to get airplanes de-iced and airborne. They wouldn’t release airplanes out of the gate to get de-iced. We just don’t have the resources for our employees to deal with that,” he said.
During the peak holiday travel season in 2022, the company’s failures were evident, according to Nekouei.
“Last year, with shutting the airline down for a week, we thought we’d get an overwhelming response with more manpower, equipment, and increased staffing. It just doesn’t seem to have happened. If we have major weather events this winter, the company is not really that capable of mitigating them,” said Nekouei.
In an email, a Southwest spokesperson responded to Nekouei’s assertion.
“Keeping our interconnected networks of airports, aircraft, and flight crews working in concert is paramount during irregular operating conditions,” the spokesperson wrote, pointing to the purchase of equipment such as more engine inlets, de-icing trucks, and high-powered heaters, as well as the securing of additional space for de-icing operations, especially for cities that experience winter weather and serve as flight crew bases, such as Baltimore, Chicago (Midway) and Denver.
In addition to hiring thousands of employees in 2023 and training more staff “than ever before” to de-ice aircraft, the company has also improved readiness, according to the spokesperson.
“Along with those tangible assets to bolster our readiness, we’ve enhanced network health dashboards, flight crew support software and communication between the groups planning our flight schedule and the groups executing our flight schedule. Our work continues and the Southwest team of more than 74,000 strong looks forward to welcoming customers onboard with our legendary hospitality during the 2023 holiday season and beyond,” the spokesperson wrote.
But with a possible strike looming, Southwest could face more uncertainty.
“We can predict that once we go on strike, the operation ceases and the airplanes don’t fly,” Nekouei said. “It’s not something we want to do. Should we do that to induce some more engagement from the company from the negotiations side, the operation would definitely be halted in terms of strike.”
Recently, SWAPA has opened a regional strike center at 140 Empire Central to “track pilots and planes in the event of a strike,” as The Dallas Express previously reported.
Nekouei’s career as a pilot began as the dream of a toddler.
“My mom tells me I’ve been wanting to do it since I was about three years old,” he said. “I was always infatuated with airplanes and flying. I don’t know where the spark came from.”
Nekouei lived in Germany because of his parents’ jobs.
“Then I came back to Colorado as soon as I could,” he said.
Nekouei said he couldn’t think of a single incident inside a cockpit that stands out to him in his memory.
“There’s over 30 years of flying, so I don’t have any particular thing I can point to and say, ‘That is interesting.’ Every now and then, you have some malfunctions that get your attention. It’s not necessarily an emergency. None of your days is identical to the next. Every day is different — different weather, different issues you’re dealing with. You never do the same thing twice,” Nekouei explained.
Nekouei, who earned an undergraduate degree in aerospace industries from the University of North Dakota and is working toward a master’s degree in organizational leadership from the University of Denver, is trained to fly Boeing 737s. Southwest’s planes are 737-800, 737-700 and 737-MAX 8.
He also has some advice for aspiring pilots as the industry continues to look to add to its ranks.
“The training takes a while, and acquiring the experience to be able to fly for an airline takes longer than the training,” he said. “Depending on the program you go through — the college — you’re probably looking at anywhere from two to three years to get most of your required ratings. Then, the issue becomes how you gain the experience when you don’t have any flight time.”
Nekouei and others get their experience through flight instruction or by flying small cargo carriers.
“Somehow, you’ve got to get the experience before flying for an airline,” he said. “I got some experience doing some flight instructing, then I picked up by my first commuter airline in my early 20s. That’s how I got the turbine aircraft experience I needed to go to bigger airlines before eventually ending up here at Southwest.”
But the experience alone isn’t enough to sustain a pilot’s career.
“You know, every six months, we go through a medical exam,” Nekouei said. “We have to prove to the FAA that we’re physically fit to fly airplanes. Even when you make it to an airline like Southwest, you can’t take it for granted. Once a year, we go into simulators to get flight-checked, and that takes two to three days. Just because you make it to an airline doesn’t mean you can take it easy. You still have to work hard.”
To stay fit, Nekouei trains for long-distance races in the summer and ski-mountaineering races in the winter.
“I like some of the West Coast cities better because they’re a lot more runner-friendly,” he said. “One of my favorites is San Diego because I can go for a long run on some of the trails. San Diego has nicer airports as well. It’s one of my favorite places to go.”