Originally Posted by wheresmyplane

Correct me if I'm wrong but a national seniority list doesn't mean a government run seniority list.... Just a way of ranking pilots so that when the airline you've been at for 20 years goes under you don't have to start at "Bob's Regional" for peanuts. From what I hear from a UK friend they already have a system where you are compensated based on your time in the industry over there. Yes, there would be people unhappy with this at first, but what about years from now? Seems like it would solve a lot of problems in the longrun, even if it steps on some toes now. Can't make everybody happy. Thoughts?

P.S. Even in a lot of trades you can at least enter a new job at a higher level of pay based on whether you're an apprentice/journeyman, whatever.

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Well if we're both pilots, if your flight dept. closed and you came to the company I work for, you would most likely be a pilot right? You wouldn't get hired right into a chief pilot job, you'd be hired as a coworker. That's not my boss, aside from the usual Capt/FO relationship. If its a matter of you coming into the company I work for with a higher seniority # than me (and the benefits that go with a higher #), then I would need enough foresight to know that if something happened at my airline, I would benefit from the system too. I would come into a new company at a level that meets my qualifications. And yes, you are entitled to be compensated - monetarily and otherwise - for what you're worth. You don't lose value just because the people running your airline flew it into the ground (reference Eastern/Braniff). Also, we would all be one pilot group, not many pilot groups that can whipsaw each other. Whipsaw would become impossible. It would do away with the divide and conquer mentality we tend to see from management. We would only have an issue with pilots willing to fly for poor pay and work rules at carriers not represented on the national list. At that point, it's really not our problem.