Originally Posted by
DarkSideMoon
How do you handle the icao rules without abrogating seniority? Will 55 year old FO’s bidding domestic trips get those trips robbed for 66 year old FO’s who can’t bid international? Will younger FO’s get pushed off of narrowbodies so a junior 66 year old can be assured of not going overseas? That’s the biggest challenge IMO. I’m fine with 67 if you start at the bottom of the list again so you don’t rob senior people of trips/fleets they want. Everyone seems to forget that older doesn’t always equal more senior. I had a 63 year old a class behind me.
That's a sticky question. Hopefully everybody's CBA language is tight enough that nobody will have their schedule adjusted out of seniority, ie the company should eat it or the Oldie eats it. Maybe the Oldie gets a chance to trade out and failing that a reserve flies it and the Oldie sits reserve?
This is similar to people who can't fly to Canada because of a DUI, some airlines will accommodate that... you bid-avoid, then try to trade out and if you can't then they swap you with a reserve.
Those with contracts open should maybe start thinking about that. Most companies can re-flow you during a trip due to IROPs, but having somebody who's illegal to fly a trip awarded it six weeks out should not constitute an IROP. This is actually easy to avoid in PBS... oldies simply can't be awarded international trips. Line bidding is a little harder... depending on the prevalence of international ops they might have to concentrate those in fewer lines to create enough domestic-only lines. This is another example of why tight union control of PBS parameters is important... don't want PBS going back up the list and taking pairings away from senior pilots because an Oldie's not legal for Edmonton.
Or pure seniority solution: if an Oldie can't bid trips/lines he's legal for then he gets reserve. Could a reserve then get called out of seniority to cover a trip? Sure, but that happens all the time anyway, most companies try to load balance reserves so if the junior has 70 hours and the senior has 10 for the month, guess who's getting called?
I think this would have negligible impact on others as long as the fleet in question is mostly domestic. So airlines would have to draw the line as to which fleets Oldies are even eligible for. It's possible that an airline could simply refuse to employ an Oldie if they don't have any pure domestic fleets.
We have a pretty solid precedent in this industry regarding seniority... companies generally can't violate it to accommodate religion, motherhood, etc. Even though people have in the past tried to claim such accommodation.This should be no different.