Originally Posted by
kevin18
Having spoken with several friends with experience from less than a year up to about 25 years at legacies none of them care who gets seniority behind them. It doesn’t change anything for them. So yes, I could see a pilot group allowing a regional pilot accrue seniority at a legacy.
Justification for it could be made that the regional pilots are making money for the legacy and do represent them. No one, except a very very small group of people, know what regional they’re flying on. They just know they bought a, insert airline here, ticket and are on a smaller plane.
People care about seniority, it’s what keeps them at their current carrier more often than not. We all know this. We all know people who don’t want to move on from a regional because they’re comfortable where they are due to their seniority. I’m sure you would have some people staying longer at a regional and waiting to move up until they can hold a line as an FO in a base they want. It doesn’t cost the company anything, unless they tag longevity to it, which I really don’t see that happening. Could be wrong.
I could see where it could hurt pilot recruitment from any source other than a branded regional. Military pilots or pilots from regionals outside of the brand wouldn’t want to go to brand X knowing that a bunch of regional pilots would come in on top of them when their flow number comes up and extend their time on reserve or prevent bidding more desirable bases.