Originally Posted by
bcrosier
I must take issue with this - as a former ATA pilot, I had pretty decent work rules, industry leading vacation rules, and decent compensation. When you factored our compensation against the days worked, we probably did close to as well as anyone out there (maybe not industry leading, but in the middle of the pack). I knew of numerous captains who worked less than half the month and earned close to or north of $200K per year.
I'm not blaming anyone, but the whole seniority system evolved under very different circumstances than exist today (namely stable airlines in a regulated environment). The system as it currently exists is broken, and I'm not sure how to equitably fix it. We should have instituted a national seniority list back in the Eastern days, but as usual self interest prevailed over the common good, and now here we are (much like SCOPE).
As much as I would like to believe a national list could be implemented, it would likely have to have a "future" start date and would be next to impossible to get everyone to agree to. Look at how badly the Age 65 change was handled.
What might work would be if airline units insisted on langauage that ALPA had back prior to the EAL strike. If a carrier folds, jobs and seniority go with the aircraft. ALPA National claimed they would demand it, but never did. DAL took 727's and DC-9's and the ATL operations, NWA got -9's and USAir took 757's. If they had taken the crewmembers with the jets, in seniority, the jobs and pay would have been preserved and the pilots at the other carriers would not have been harmed.
Duffy was more interested in protecting DAL ALPA and getting rid of their competition. That's fine. But it perpetuated the problem instead of having a leader stand up and do what would have been right and not put us where we are today; each going after the other and management getting the work done for less. The leverage would have been tremendous.
Today we see the same thing. Unfortunately I don't see the leadership with the spine for making the tough decisions in DC. Or Atlanta.