Originally Posted by
mike734
Pilots who carry passengers have NO business competing with each other. That kind of motivation doesn't belong in the back of the minds of someone making life or death decisions. The safety record of civilian flying is so much better than military flying for many reasons, one of which is the ability of civilian pilots to say NO. The last thing our industry needs is sycophant and ambitious pilots taking unnecessay risks to promote themselves. It's been tried and failed.
I appreciate you have an opinion, and I respect that. But it's just an opinion. If a merit based system is good enough for every other profession out there, including fighter pilots, soldiers and police officers...then it's good enough for airline pilots.
If you are acting in an unprofessional manner in order to achieve promotion that behavior will be apparent and will get you canned before you move ahead anyway. Stop acting as if being an airline pilot is so difficult and noble.
And I don't believe it's ever been tried and failed. I've never seen that seniority promotes safety. The system forces airlines to dumb down standards to allow pilots to upgrade who otherwise aren't ready except for being next in line. Modern next gen airliners are designed to be idiot proof and it takes more and more effort to crash them.
While seniority has it's faults, it ensures that pilots can make go or no go decisions without thinking it will distroy their careers. Fortunately it's here to stay.
That's nonsense...if you are operating in a free market system and you believe your employer is pressuring you to behave in an unprofessional manner, you can quit and go work for the competition in a similar position at similar pay without having to start at the bottom. In our current system you can't do that.
Besides, the seniority system is not a prerequisite for the protection of a union. I'm not against unions per se, I'm just against ALPA because they so adamantly back the seniority system, work on behalf of management more than for pilots, and feed the pilots a bunch of propaganda so they don't realize they are living in a communist microcosm while the rest of America is (mostly) free.
Originally Posted by
mike734
...And another thing. What if the "best" pilots got to fly the biggest or fastest or whatever, does that mean the passenger public would know that when they fly a smaller plane, they are getting a lessor pilot? When I fly as a passenger I'm very happy to think there might be a roger ramjet up there sitting next to a more senior dufus. At least one of them is competent. In a merit based system the last two pilots would get paired together. That doesn't sound too great.
That makes no sense.
For one thing you are pretty much describing the system in place today.
Secondly You're assuming that the career progression would be the same as today where pilots would downgrade from jet captain to be a copilot on a larger plane (a wasteful phenomenon created by the seniority system in airlines).
Third, you are trying to apply the faulty logic of the seniority system in a non seniority environment. Why do you think everyone will want to fly the biggest and fastest planes? In a free market system there will be incentives to work as a captain in a smaller plane such as higher pay and shorter routes closer to home which will attract many senior pilots. I personally flew long haul and was bored out of my mind...I just liked the layovers but that got old too.
And in the end the most important issue here is that airline pilot salaries have been steadily declining at all levels while other professions have flourished in our economy. I'm sure you have a whole list of people you've enjoyed blaming but the reality is that we are working with a broken system that is designed to lower our wages and lock us into a job with almost no negotiating power by taking away our ability to walk to the competition.
Follow Albert Einstein's wisdom: If you keep trying the same thing over and over expecting different results....