Philosophically I'm OK with contractually mitigating the severity of juniority.

But it's a bit of an uphill slog...

1. People who paid their dues don't typically want to make others suffer because they did, but they probably don't want to trade a lot of negotiating capital either.

2. Some flight operations are just going to suck, you are not going to have much luck contractually banning redeyes.

The only realistic way to mitigate that is with pilot scheduling, either micro, macro, or both.

Macro: Guarantee more days off.

Micro: Reduce duty day length, circadian swaps, limit daily legs to three, etc, etc

Any of that requires that more pilots be employed.

Another micro option would be significant overrides for redeyes or other circadian disruption. That way fewer folks would be forced to fly them, kind of like what we have with holiday pay. WB flying already has this via higher pay scales but that's industry standard anyway.

It all circles back around to cost, which has to come out of somewhere else. What are you going to sacrifice? Hourly rate?

Actually I do kind of like the idea of yearly variable guarantee... mid-year everybody opts for a guarantee range for next year, which they are then locked into. Could be anywhere from 50 - 90 hours +/- 10 for seasonal variability. Something along those lines. That way the company could plan their staffing far enough in advance to hire as needed. If you're junior and don't like your crap trips, you can trade away money for more time off. Kind of like IL's and VRBO, you just commit to it in advance rather than spend your whole month on the trade boards.