Originally Posted by
tcco94
That makes sense. Another thing I hear often is don't upgrade until you can hold a line at a junior base. When you come out of upgrade training how does your seniority work? I assumed your class went to the bottom of the list...
No. In the US (different overseas), your seniority is global and applicable to all seats, aircraft, and bases. It is set based on hire date, and for those with the same hire date, some other random order.
This means your RELATIVE seniority in a certain base, airplane, and seat is what matters.
So if you stay an FO for a longer time, ie don't take the first upgrade, you can then wait until people with global seniority junior to you hold a line in a certain base, and then upgrade. You'll come into that base on top of those with global seniority less than yours.
For example, a certain pilot's seniority might look like this...
Global: 50%
Junior Base FO: 8%
Junior Base CA: 55%
Senior Base FO: 45%
Senior Base CA: Can't hold it at all.
If schedule was key, then he'd want to stay an FO in the junior base.
If money/TPIC was his priority, then he'd have to upgrade into the junior base.
If wanted to live in the senior base, he could be an FO with average seniority, but couldn't even hold CA yet. In some cases he might even have BETTER seniority as a junior base CA than a senior base FO!