Originally Posted by
three1five
Yeah, this is the problem. Pilots perceive the goodwill of the pilot group to be incredibly important, but it’s not really that important to anyone outside the pilot group. It should be, for the intangibles mentioned above, but it isn’t. The pax couldn’t care less, they find a lot of the “above and beyond” customer service stuff from pilots annoying anyway (until we divert and then they care very much).
Pilot goodwill would be worth more if pilots had the ability to move to greener pastures. Seniority means so much in this industry, but instead of minimizing it, we always make it more and more important. If pilots had the ability to move to another company without decimating one's career, we'd have a lot more leverage when it comes to negotiation time.
Unfortunately, we are in an industry that has "done things this way" for so long, we can't imagine things being done differently. In addition, most people at the top seniority have had to go through this really ****ty system, so to change courses now would require an insurmountable task.