Originally Posted by
Jughead135
Isn't this the situation that normally leads to displacement?
Understood that displacement generally sucks from POV of the affected pilot(s), so I'm certainly not cheering the idea--it's just, my (likely flawed) understanding of why procedures for displacement exist is "too many pilots in category X; fix via displacement."
Is that not how displacement works? Is displacement so costly to the company that it's better to be imbalanced & start DH'ing guys around to fill the gaps? An attempt to avoid training requirements [goes to the cost issue, I suppose]? Or is this an attempt by the company to "work with" people?
As usual, I'm sure I'm missing something....
Well look no further than what they did to right size the 747 category. They offered 50 early outs, with advanced pay, rather than suffer the cascading training events that displacing 50 senior pilots would cause.
On the other fleets, they hope the surplus pilots will bid up to something else, before they have to displace them, for all the reasons Denny mentioned above.
Every displacement causes them to be liable for a paid move, training that pilot then more training and possibly more displacements, if those displaced guys displace others, etc. They would MUCH rather have surplus pilots bid up to fill the next A/E, or bid to another base, and simply not backfill those positions.
Look at the ATL 777. They -hope- some DTW 777 pilots will bid it, and save them the expense of displacing them.
The bottom 10 747 Capts. are 400 numbers junior to the bottom 777 Capts, so those displaced off the 747 won't be able to hold the 777, and will have to go to the A330 or 765, but some of the more senior 765 and A330 guys might bid those 25 777 slots and make room for the 10 displaced 747 guys, so hopefully there won't be a lot of cascading displacements.