Because nobody wants to give up their good deal is why. Those senior guys have made their choice to be senior in relative seat position because they have earned it by a function of their time at Delta. They choose to forgo higher paying positions for the lifestyle the seniority holds. It would be unfair to change the rules mid game for them IMO. Everyone will be senior eventually and that is the reward for the time spent in the career. They once had to endure junior reserve too. The more we mess with good deals the more the job becomes vanilla. Those senior right seaters would most likely upgrade delaying captain choice for the more junior. We've all been there. We all make choices.

Ah, the "it's always been that way" typical Delta answer. Fair is not having a jr pilot fly 12 days before a senior one gets his first trip.

To be clear, I don't think it'll change unless the majority (junior pilots) want it. I'm in the top half of the list.

it doesn’t take 12 days of flying to get into the 2nd bucket. Probably more like 6 and even less if you throw in a short call or two.

Well, it has always been that way and the senior guys endured the "injustice" of the system to now NOT benefit from it? Why is choice such a bad thing? Choose a seat you are NOT junior in if you don't want to be "abused." If the pandemic makes you junior... so did 9/11, bankruptcy and the lost decade. Sorry, about your career choice but there's always time to redirect if you are not happy. You'll get there if YOU choose. Learn how to bid because if this is really happening to you (12 days of flying before a senior guy does 1 day) you're doing it wrong.

What in the world? It's a seniority based system. Show of hands: who knew that when they got here?

*Raises hand*

When I'm senior I'll do what i want. I'll never even be very senior at this company when i retire.

I don't think anyone either disagrees with or doesn't understand that. The real question is to what degree does it apply when the rubber meets the runway because its clealry not unlimited.

The whole RAW bucket system came about supposedly to address the very rare exceptions of when a seinor pilot would get hammered with a horrible trip just because they were as little as 1 RAW point (less than a block hour) from a junior newbie. Oh the humanity!

Even back then, senior reserves could still easily work the system and benefit over the junior a large majority of the time. To be fair, there were some isolated examples of a senior pilot getting a crappy long trip while the plug stayed home all week simply because the junior pilot had a minute more time towards the RAW. The problem was not wide spread or common, but it was very emotional when it happened. Many were still pining for the days of "you have to max out before I should have to ever turn a wheel". Same mentality as doing a year's worth of fill in the blank "good deal" sea lawyer contract ninja stuff then punching out with double the pension for life. The siren song of insanely good deals dies very, very hard indeed.

The current system did offer a band aid of sorts to some of the more egregious examples of the undeserving junior plebs dancing all over the daily coverage list of the upperclassmen. But it also unknowingly created more tools for scheduling to pop chaff in a way that for many categories no matter where you are on the relative seniority in a BES, you're always number one for something.

Also often forgotten was even before the current RAW buckets, you could always high or low yellow with your seniority, thus giving yourself a 30 RAW score window to pick up or avoid things. The etherial entitlement of bidding reserve to only fly a couple times a year as an inalienable right will persist long after it stops being a thing.

Been junior most of my career and I'm good with the current system. It sucked seeing the same 10 guys get most of the GS's while hardly ever flying a reserve trip, but that's the game and I knew it when I bid up to a position in which I'd be junior. Thanks to the big displacement, I'm going to try out being senior in category for a bit. Haven't even trained on the new aircraft yet and I'm already digging it. Had an old Captain tell me to get in the top page or two of the wide report and don't move up until you can hold the same in the next category. I'm starting to see the wisdom in his words.

You are right - not fair. Now that you are here let’s cancel seniority

It depends.

Pre C19, international categories had 6 day trips. One could fly a 6 day, sit a couple of short calls and still be in bucket 1.

If you're junior, avoiding reserve day groupings of 5 days or less isn't always a given.

Maybe we should start all new Pilots at the bottom of the seniority list and work their way up. :D You are making it seem like the current senior Pilots were hired into senior positions and never put their time in being junior.

Oh yeah we didn’t have a RAW score back in the day - Junior guys flew all the trips until they maxed out so the guys who were senior had it worse back then.


Scoop