Thread: Airlines & Wide-body Upgrade
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Old 11-30-2015, 11:40 AM
  #10  
MaxThrustPower
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Joined APC: Aug 2014
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Originally Posted by JustinTC View Post
... "The quicker you get to wide-bodies, the quicker your seniority grows in that equipment." From your response, I can see that's not (ever) the case (from my personal experience)

You're welcome, JustinTC.

Yes, I'm not aware of ANY major US airline that uses a seniority system where your tenure in a particular bid status or airplane type trumps your system seniority (generally based on date-of-hire). I have heard of airlines in some parts of the world hiring pilots directly into Captain positions based on their experience, or hiring "contract" pilots who worked independent of the seniority systems in their airlines, but that's not the way the major US airlines work.

So get hired as soon as you can. Take the earliest class date available. (Some guys I know who were flexible or lived close to their training center volunteered after getting hired to take an earlier, short-notice class date if one came available and sometimes it moved them up hundreds of numbers in the system.) You'll find you live-and-die by that number and you can't improve it once you've got your place in line. As openings become available, you can "bid" for other jobs ... other airplanes, bases, Captain upgrades etc ... and it's all awarded, first-come, first-serve by that system seniority number. Then, once you get into that new "bid status", your relative seniority within that group is based on your system seniority (date-of-hire). I know some guys who deferred upgrading to wide-body FO or narrow-body Captain so that they could by-pass the less desirable "Reserve" jobs and go directly to holding a schedule. They automatically jumped ahead of 30 to 40% of the other pilots who were already doing that job, many who were chasing the "carrot" of the next upgrade ASAP at any cost.

The nice thing is, we all make those career decisions based on our personal preferences, what's happening in our lives at the moment, and how that affects our priorities for the balance between money and QOL. To each his own.

Hope this helps further clarify how seniority works. There's a lot to learn about how the airlines work after coming from the military! (I'm former military also.)

Best wishes.
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