I don't "cling" to that at all. It not only doesn't bother me in the slightest, I'd never consider a trip through VA Ave and a loss of relative BES seniority to chase a one jump fleet raise anyway. Its mostly on paper as staying senior usually pays far more than the paper raise in rate differences if you know how to work it. The power of seniority massively trumps a one plane step raise in almost every case. Even super senior WB FO to Junior NB CA is only the raise it appears to be if you don't know how to (or can't be bothered to) use iCrew.

What the banding and especially the longevity pay peeps never seem to explain is how will we get any significant net improvement with those models, unilaterally, without any overt or unintended concessions. We ain't on the verge of getting 350 pay for all (at least outside the schoolhouse) so any "one rate" scenario would be at the expense of higher rates in some categories. We then say how much it would magically save the company, yet they're not interested in it (or at least whatever our terms would be).

IMO we could see some additional banding lumped into a CBA but nothing huge. Its not a high priority for me either regardless of how many 350's we have or 380's we might get (lol). LBP actually serves as a huge disincentive to recapture or grow bottom end flying as well.