Originally Posted by
DarkSideMoon
It’d be interesting. I assume they’d need some kind of Loa or contractual change, especially on fleets that do domestic and international flying. Maybe they’d get re-stapled on to the bottom or something.
I’m just imagining say the 75/76. Number 45 is like 45 years old and wants all domestic flying. There’s not enough domestic flying for the 66 year old number 46 to build a full line. They’d have to either rob someone higher on the list of some domestic flying or pay the 66 year old to not work which isn’t fair to the more senior folks either. Not an impossible thing to work out but I’m not sure it would go over well in most pilot groups.
You could displace them, but with 321 NEOS/XLRS, A220’s, etc NB won’t be a guarantee you’re not flying abroad at most legacies.
Reserve would also get more complicated.
Since it would presumably be to the airline's benefit, they would have to sort it out. Probably create special bid categories to fence those people into domestic ops... anybody could bid for it, and I guess if you're too junior to hold it and too old to fly other categories then you'd go on unpaid inactive status until you could hold domestic.
Or if an airline didn't want to deal with it, they could just kick 65+ to the curb... if all your fleets go international you're not obligated to employ people who can't do the job. Union CBA actually helps with that, since the company cannot simply abrogate seniority to "accommodate" old folks.
My gut feel is that we'll see age 67 here within 5-8 years.