If you were around Southwest Airlines in March 2020, you probably remember how quickly everything changed. Flight schedules all but evaporated. Airports emptied. And for the first time in the recent history of Southwest Airlines, the word “furlough” no longer sounded like something that happened somewhere else.
For a class of Pilots who had just started new hire training in February, the timing could not have been worse.
They arrived at Southwest with the same excitement we all remember — new uniform, new ID, and the realization that after years of working toward it, they were finally about to sit in the right seat of a Southwest cockpit. Then, in a matter of days, the support structure around them began to disappear. Hotel restaurants closed. Training footprints changed. The world outside Love Field was moving fast, and the group chat for the February 2020 class quickly turned from enthusiasm to fear and uncertainty.
When the class finished, the last name on the Southwest Airlines seniority list belonged to Wafa “Dean” Jamous.
For the roughly 3,000 Pilots who have joined Southwest since, that moment needs a little context. As everyone knows, when furloughs become possible, the junior Pilots are the ones at risk. Dean was our most junior Pilot, so “Keep Dean” became shorthand for something bigger: Keep every Pilot on property.
Today, Dean is preparing to begin Captain upgrade on September 28. Six and a half years after he was last on the list, he is headed to the left seat. But for almost two years of his Southwest career, he didn’t even bid. When you are last on the list, there isn’t really a point.
“All things considered, I’ve been pretty lucky in my time here,” Dean said.
That might be the most Dean thing he could say.
Dean is reserved and humble. He seeks no recognition and probably would have preferred to remain anonymous. But in the spring of 2020, he became something larger than the most junior Pilot in the system. He became a symbol of what a Pilot group can be when it decides that the person at the bottom of a list is not someone else’s problem.
Matt Gottschalk was the leader for the February 2020 new hire class. He had been hired the previous June, but his wife became very ill around the time he came on property. Matt spent three days in training (long enough to receive a seniority number) before the Company told him to take care of his family. With help from Jennifer Davis in the Training Center, he was able to return in February.
That is when he first met Dean.
“I remember he showed up to the new hire dinner with his dad,” said Matt. “Most people bring a wife, husband, or significant other. Dean brought his dad. He was a really chill, cool guy.”
At the time, the Company had been hiring, and nobody thought Dean would be at the bottom of the list for long. New hire classes were expected to continue. Dean was simply the junior person in a group of Pilots who were excited to be there.
Then COVID hit.
Matt and Dean had Navy Reserve opportunities to fall back on, but their minds went to their classmates who did not. People were trying to make ends meet while preparing for the possibility that their new careers might be over before they began.
“There were people doing everything they could to prepare for the worst,” Matt said. “You’re in this little bubble in training, but the world outside is moving and changing really fast.”
As the reality of the situation set in, Matt found himself at the Hilton Anatole with fellow classmate Adam Gardner and another Captain who was going through recurrent. The conversation turned to their class likely being the last one for a while. The Captain mentioned the uncertainty of the 2008 financial crisis, when a junior Pilot with the last name Johnson had inspired an informal rallying cry.
They laughed, then started throwing around ideas.
Someone mentioned Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. “Save Ferris” had the right feel and when he returned to his hotel room, Matt started playing around with graphics.
One of them stuck.
#KeepDean
Matt shared the design with the class and they ran with it. Then somehow it escaped the group chat and made its way into the larger Pilot community.
“We never thought it would take off Company-wide,” Matt said.
Dean certainly did not.
He was reluctant to become the face of anything, but he understood what the slogan meant. It wasn’t really about him. It was about every Pilot on the seniority list and the shared belief that Southwest Pilots should keep every one of their own on property.
Almost immediately, Pilots began recognizing him on trips.
“Are you the Dean?” became the obvious question.
The answer came with the same message: “We’ve got your back.”
Annie Judd, a BWI First Officer, got ahold of the graphic and helped take it to the next level. Soon, #KeepDean was everywhere: lanyards, bag tags, and social media posts. Gate agents had stickers. The slogan appeared on baggage carts where passengers could see it accompany their luggage.
To most Pilots, Dean was the last name on the list. To the February 2020 class, he was someone they had eaten lunch with, trained alongside, and worried about.
There was only one problem: Nobody could find him.
Dean’s given name is Wafa Jamous, and his CWA profile did not initially show “Dean.” Pilots searching for the most junior Pilot on the list could not find the guy whose name had suddenly appeared throughout the system. Then one of Dean’s best friends made things worse by jokingly spreading a rumor that he had gone to FedEx.
For a brief moment, some Pilots thought #KeepDean had become #LostDean.
Of course, nobody was hiring. Dean had no desire to leave Southwest. But he did call Scheduling and have “Dean” added to his CWA profile. Short of a public service announcement, it was the best way to let the Pilot group know that the Dean they wanted to keep was still where he belonged.
There is a temptation to remember #KeepDean as a catchy social media moment. And it was catchy. In the middle of an uncertain and frightening time, it gave Pilots something familiar to hold onto.
But it was never just a slogan.
By the fall of 2020, the industry’s financial pain was becoming impossible to ignore. Southwest sought 10% pay reductions from unionized workgroups to keep the Company afloat.
Then came December 3.
Southwest issued WARN notices to almost seven thousand employees, including 1,221 Pilots at the bottom of the seniority list. Those notices were legally required messaging of possible furlough.
For some, it didn’t feel real at first. For others, it felt like a death knell.
Dean remembers the timing. Christmas was around the corner. Pilots had bought homes, started families, and planned their lives around careers they believed were secure. Budgets changed overnight. The notices did not just represent a possible furlough. They represented an unknown future arriving in the coldest possible way.
“It was a low point,” Dean reflected.
Matt had returned to the Navy Reserves. He remembers wondering whether anyone at headquarters had a #KeepDean sticker somewhere in an office. A month later, on January 4, 2021, Matt’s wife passed away. There is now a plaque dedicated to her on the foosball table in the training center. Another class created it in her memory — a small reminder of what Pilots will do when someone in their own community needs help.
The furloughs never came. Congress approved additional payroll support, and Southwest withdrew its planned furloughs before they took effect. But there was no single day when everyone suddenly exhaled. The uncertainty faded slowly. The industry began to recover. And eventually, in December 2021, new hire classes resumed.
Even now, his name is sometimes recognized on CrewHub during a trip, and he’s asked, “Are you the one?”
He usually plays it down.
“We may be Pilots,” Dean says, “but we’re all under the same roof.”
Maybe that’s why Dean was the right person to be a symbol in the first place. He never treated #KeepDean as recognition for himself. He saw it as a reminder that his classmates and many others at the Company faced the same uncertainty, and that the people who wore the stickers had their own mortgages, commutes, retirements, families, and worries.
Meanwhile, Matt has seen that principle play out in a very different aviation setting. As a Navy Reserve fighter Pilot, he helped support the production of Top Gun: Maverick. But what stayed with Matt was not the movie set. It was the reason so many people showed up to make the film work. The mission wasn’t just to make a movie. It was to help tell a story that could inspire the next generation of Pilots.
A film works because hundreds of people commit to something bigger than their own scene. A new hire class survives a black swan event because classmates look out for one another. A Pilot group keeps its strength when the membership waves one banner.
Six and a half years later, Dean begins Captain upgrade.
He is no longer the last name on the list. He is no longer the new hire whose future felt as though it might be decided before his career really began. But he has not forgotten what it felt like to see the Pilot group show up for him.
“I just happened to be in that position, but I hope the mindset that came from that time gets carried forward. Don’t become the airline where it’s every Pilot for themselves. We still have something special here, and it’s up to us to keep it that way.”
That may be the lasting lesson of #KeepDean. Unity is easy to celebrate after the danger has passed. It’s harder — and far more meaningful — to choose it when someone else’s problem is not yet your own.
Somewhere in the system today, there’s a Dean out there: A new hire trying to figure it out, a displaced Pilot wondering how long it’s going to last, someone carrying a burden the rest of us can’t see. They may not be in position to be a symbol, but it doesn’t mean they don’t matter. And somewhere nearby, there’s another Matt: Someone with the chance to notice, do something about it, organize the help, or simply remind a fellow Pilot that they aren’t alone.
Who will be the next Dean and Matt?
When the time comes, the example has been set.
Pay it forward.
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