Originally Posted by
hummingbear
I’ll play the odds & guess those 777 CAs were at the upper age range. That would put them at the top seniority in their new hire class, which also means they get first pick on choosing their BES. It’s the young guys in each group who get stuck with the leftovers. Even if we may hire a lot of very experienced candidates, those guys, in general, are not the ones getting last pick in BI- see the problem?
I have no issue with giving an experienced guy w/ logbooks full of WB crossings the opportunity to choose NBCA; but that’s very different from telling the 24YO 8ball in that same class that he has to take it.
Bingo. There will be some in the class who don't have the luxury of being able to turn it down. We need to be realistic about the makeup of our classes going forward. If the current hiring trends are any indication, it will be a lot of LCC folks who jumped from right seat to right seat, military guys with no 121 experience, and the majority of the remainder will be regional guys. Granted,
most of the regional folks, but not all by any means, will have been in the left seat.
The overwhelming majority of guys will either A) have the good sense to know they're not immediately ready for the left seat at United as a new hire, and/or B) realize that their QOL will be terrible for the entire 2 years they're forced to be in the left seat. Which means the majority of these slots will fall to the youngest guys in the class. While age is not perfectly correlated with experience, I'd hazard that the majority of older folks will have more meaningful experience that the majority of younger folks. Again, I recognize that isn't universally true (there have been 8 Balls that were LCAs), but on the average it probably is more true than not.
The key is exactly as you described it, it should be a choice, not a requirement for employment.