Originally Posted by
Excargodog
And legacy flying seniority growth is different. With multiple payscales for multiple aircraft fleets and NBs at the bottom of those payscales the advancement is pretty quick with those retirements. And especially quick in the NB fleets.
Even if the losses are from WB CAs they ripple down quickly into the NB ranks. Where NK was retiring 25-50 people a year from a pilot group of 3000 United is retiring 600-700 a year from 16,000, but almost all of that 700 a year ripples down into the NB CADRE which is maybe 7000 - 8000 pilots, only a little more than twice the NB pilots NK had before the current unpleasantness.
Not even counting growth, the effective NB seniority to CA at UA increases vastly quicker than at NK and so does NB seniority at CA, since you continue to lose CAs to fill WB retirement vacancies.
It's a whole different ball game in seniority progression in the NB. So maybe you are too old to ever get to WB CA, you can still get to NB CA a lot faster and gain seniority as a NB CA faster. Pretty much the same for the other big three legacies. Not to mention that a number of people senior to you will find their niche at WB FO, where they will stay until they retire or are senior enough to make WB CA, and never compete for NB CA at all.
It's really a sort of fascinating queuing theory example.
No one is debating any of this. What if you are already close to the top of NK? Anyone in the right seat at NK should absolutely leave if they ever want to be a CA. If you’re already a CA AND senior totally different ballgame. That senility is never returning once you start over unless you are very young. There are very few senior CA at NK that are also very young. Many middle aged and not old but a long way from very young.