Airline Pilot Central Forums - COVID and seniority

There certainly is a lot of heated argument here on APC about how COVID should be managed, with some posters calling others ‘keyboard warriors’ and some calling others cowards. A lot of it seems to center around what the actual case fatality rate with some people touting the original (and now largely discredited) WHO estimates of around 3.2%, some saying (based largely on antibody testing) that it’s little more than the case fatality rate of a moderately bad influenza strain, and yet others touting numbers as high as 6 or 7% that they believe to be the correct figures.

it is clear that a lot of people have become set in their opinions and reluctant to budge no matter what new evidence the other side is willing to present. So instead I’ll suggest we look at another issue that clearly we DO have the ability to manipulate - perhaps through temporary LOAs. Perhaps we should look not at HOW MANY but at WHO is getting seriously ill and is actually doing the dying. That is sort if why we’ve been gathering vital statistics around here all the way back to colonial days.

if one looks at WHO is dying, the death rate for this coronavirus is trivial for anyone under 20, and certainly for anyone under 20 that would have passed even a flight physical. Risk for anyone under 40 is actually pretty damn low too, and up to age 50 you are still pretty safe. So I would like to suggest a ‘modest proposal’ to borrow a title from Jonathan Swift that for the next two years or so we sort of reverse seniority.

That is, the young guys coming out of training or upgrade can be the line holders, and have priority for bidding the best schedules and doing a lot of flying while the most senior pilots spend their last few years on reserve, either sheltering in place at their homes if they live in base or - if commuters - being able to safely isolate themselves in a cozy hotel room or rental room when not off duty and avoiding the risk of passenger exposure except if absolutely necessary.

This would be even more important to some of our geriatric FAs who, unencumbered by age restrictions, have been hanging around since they were senior FAs for TWA and PanAm. Let the youngsters fly - the twenty-somethings who even if they get coronavirus are unlikely to even notice.

It’s for the sake of safety - how can anyone object?

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