Excargodog

Ultimately your seniority depends on three things. Retirement of people senior to you and growth of the carrier you are working for and the time you have left until age 65.

For a number of historical reasons, the Big Three are going to be seeing a LOT of retirements. But historically (ie, preCOVID) the L/ULCCs have been growing, as much as 17% per year, which was allowing their pilots to upgrade much faster, but with younger pilots there is less seniority growth through retirement. Both Alaska and SWA have relatively young pilot groups as well and slower upgrades than the Big Three or the ULCCs.

But there are some other variables that are sort of wild cards. No guarantee that the ULCCs can maintain their recent rate of growth. They think they can, but who really knows? COVID has knocked down international and business flying. Some of that has come back, but a lot hasn’t yet. How soon and whether or not it all ever will come back remains to be determined. Also, the legacies seem to be going big on joint ventures with foreign airlines. They must be making money doing it or they wouldn’t do it, so it’ll help profit sharing $. What it does to seniority will sort of depend on how the CBA is negotiated - an area where historically the RLA seems to give the advantage to management.

But you are right about the effects of seniority - but figuring seniority growth is a question with a lot of moving parts. Your guess is probably as good as anyone else’s.