Originally Posted by
Airbum
having worked for non union airlines who promote out of seniority I certainly didn't find it a good thing from the safety standpoint. Be ready to ignore mx issues , duty limits and better not be late blocking out.
How about calling in sick? At one of the largest unionized regionals, actually an airline that purchased a couple of majors recently, you should ask their pilots the policy on sick calls, and the discipline related to what the company may term as "occurrence." It's not a union, it's called a crappy company with abusive management... and they can get away with it too because they know you can't afford to start over and/or don't want to step out of line for that left seat.
I know that each of us is this great aviator being held back by all those ahead of us on the list but maybe just maybe that isn't so. In a large organization of thousands how on earth would one determine who was the best? Best at what?
Who is the best pilot here?
A non union pilot who works all day in the office then takes off to fly a 14:30 duty period at night hoping his F/O is rested and can take up the slack? Or the union guy who wants more gas although the minimum legal amount of fuel is onboard?
My leading questions more then suggest my opinion but I know who I want flying over my home.
How about the best qualified pilot? How about looking at the overall performance? How about peer review? How about a scoring system where your longevity with the company scores you some points for loyalty?
This is not to say that there is no place for seniority, but to base an entire pilot existence and life on his date-of-hire with NO regard whatsoever to anything else is insane. For example, why should a 30 year 777 captain go be an FO flying 737's or MD80's or worse if his airline goes under? Do you not see anything wrong with this picture?
Here's another thing... we like to call ourselves professionals. Ask yourself, if your airline's CEO decides to leave your airline and go to another airline, is he automatically sentenced to being a junior filing clerk simply because he changed his jobs?
Another question I'd really like to hear opinions on... I can understand the fears of "butt-kissing, brown-nosing, rule-bending, etc." in order to get ahead, and this could hold true at a small crappy company. Now let's take a company with several thousand pilots and that airline needs a few thousand captains. How practical would it be to do all those things above to get ahead in such a large organization?
This is a good debate, and I'm glad it's respectful.