Sink r8

I'll stipulate to your assertion that I'm in the minority on this one. I just want us to be clear: when we use age, we ARE, by definition engaging in age discrimination. I recognize the argument for it, and it's probably as logical as any other system, but it IS age discrimination. Which is the reason it was successfully challenged.

I think the main reason it endured as long as it did was tradition.

Again, none of this affects me either way.

LeineLodge

I'm not sure there is a "righter" way. I guess we could have everyone spin a wheel, pick a number out of a hat, or something like that but it doesn't change the fact that Delta has to figure out some way to put everyone on the list.

As someone else pointed out a few pages ago, the SSN is a pre-randomized way of doing it. The way I see it, nobody in a newhire class has a claim or right to any advantage over another pilot in that same class. They all showed up on day 1 together. Even though I don't have a dog in the fight, randomizing it with the SSN seems the "rightest" way to go, and I don't see it changing anytime soon.

Denny Crane

Well, lets face it, the most we are talking about is 50 or so seniority numbers in a class, so that's what we are talking about. I'll give you a personal example. I was number 22 out of 26 in my class based on age. The last guy who got into the MD-11 in PDX was in my class and 15 numbers senior to me. I commuted to it in Atlanta...

Like I said, all we are talking about is probably 50 numbers (75 if there is a class that big). So why not take age out of the equation? I just feel like, in the past, age has reared its ugly head a number of times (seniority number, Claim, Note, and targeted DC plan) and I've come out on the short end of the stick. Is it my fault I got hired at a younger age than others (29)? I don't think so. I think it should be a random selection and ssn is just as good as any other.

I'm certainly not bitter about anything. I just disagree with the age thing.

Denny

Sink r8

Let me take one last shot at this agonizing equine.

Not everyone in a class was hired together. I would order people by date of conditional offer. If there are multiple CJO's on the same day, then go by earliest application date. This way, you're rewarding the people that actually made it through the selection process first, and people with interest in the company second.

Sink r8

Thanks Denny. I'm not upset about it either. I'm just asking "why age", and "why older"?

TED74

Your concern seems to be focused on who gets rewarded, and the things you're seeking to reward - date of successful interview and company interest - are rather odd to me. A seniority-based system laughs so hard in the face of fair rewards that I'm not interested in even trying to seek out a fair reward in this particular case. The reason I fully support age discrimination (how you like to characterize it) is this: it's more likely to put the more experienced pilots in the Captain seat for more days/months/years. Sure, there are wild deviations from the mean and the median, but there would at least be some measurable positive correlation between age and valuable life/flying experiences, where randomized SSNs by definition offer no such correlation.

If you PREFER randomness over purposeful age discrimination, the SSN method is a fantastic way to do it...let people know ahead of time where they are likely to fall such that they can use that information to make an informed decision about which airline to work for.

It's tough to care when Delta is churning out more than 100/month, but it will definitely matter down the road just as it already has in so many peoples' careers to date.

ghilis101

Interesting conversation. Im 33 and a very low SSN, and I was 5 from the bottom in my class of 50. If they did it by age, I would have been maybe 6 or 7 from the bottom. So I guess it just depends how you are affected. There were a couple of 40+ in our class that are junior to me who would have been top 5 in the class, so their perspective is much different. At the end of the day youre working for an industry leading airline with nonstop hiring projected for 10+ years, so really the focus should be more on things like a great contract next year, eliminating training pay and just going to straight 1st year pay right off the bat instead of after OE, and giving new hires hotel rooms in training, etc.

Sink r8

I agree, it's sort of unconventional. I just occurred to me that people get hired in order, so there really shouldn't be any problem keeping them in order. They then get put in a larger sample size, and re-shuffled according to their SSN, and can end up junior to someone who got hired weeks, or months, after them. That's actually the weird part, if you think about it.

And if you're really thinking about this, you probably have too much free time.

Moondog

Well I hunt a lot this time of year, so I have lots of thinking time.

Like the idea of by CJO date then age, not that it matter one whit what I think. Didn't mean to kick the hornets nest was just saying. Just happy to be here!!(Well almost here)

Sink r8

No hornets were harmed during this conversation. It's just a casual discussion, as far as I'm concerned.

The big picture is that everyone who is already here is really, really glad to see new faces. Pecking order in classes of 75: that's a problem I'd like to discuss all year long!