Maintaining seniority number
 

Greetings all, I'm a separating active duty type looking to go the regional route and continue flying in the reserves. In the event of a deployment or stateside activation, does a pilot maintain their seniority number, or do they get paused in seniority time and space?

Thanks in advance!

Your seniority continues. It's like you're still there.

A person at one airline showed up for indoc, finished training, and then took military leave. The next time he showed up to the airline was for his upgrade training.

Just curious why are you trying to start out doing the regional route
No offense to the regional pilots.

My airline recently started a policy of not allowing seniority accrual for new-hires who have not completed training. I think this may be legal based on how they categorize new-hire trainees (ie, not as regular employees). In light of that it might be prudent to plan on completing training (including consolidation) to ensure seniority accrual.

They got tired of folks leaving AD, showing up just long enough to get a seniority number and then going on long-term orders before ever flying the line. Some of these folks never intended to return, but pocketed the seniority number as a fallback option in case plan A didn't work out down the road.

A previous employer of mine had a similar guy.

I was a new hire with him, finished IOE and then he went right to officer training almost a month later.

Did 5 years, came back when he could hold upgrade, finished CA OE and got his 3rd type rating, went back to his guard/reserve job.

Ended up at one of the box carriers shortly after.

Due to longer commitments and forced non flying tours these days many people are getting off active duty without flight currency that the majors are looking for. Regionals, corporate and ISR companies will take guys who haven't flown for years.

It's called the Uniform Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (USERRA). Once you have employee status, you're covered. Good for a cumulative five years, unless there is a Presidential Call Up; then it's indefinite. You keep your seniority, your longevity, sick and vacation accruals, as well as retirement plan contributions from your employer, as if you had never left. Any smart employer is scared to death of running afoul of this law. This is one of the things that causes employers to discriminate against Guard and Reserve pilots (which is also illegal). I personally got eight years of active duty on this program, and cobbled together 20 active. Checks are deposited like clockwork every month.

Well that brings up a good point. I don't meet hourly requirements for the majors, but I'm getting the impression that the airlines as a whole compliment reserve flying service better, or at least as well as, corporate/charter, etc jobs. I'm just not seeing the flexibility with these flying careers as well as with the airlines.

Bottom line, I'm looking for reserve and civilian flying jobs to compliment each other, or at the very least, not butt heads with each other.

Any opinions or input are welcome. I haven't committed to anything yet, besides to GTFO of the active duty side of the house.

If your goal is to get to a major, be careful. During interviews, majors are starting to look at logbooks to see if you worked on major holidays your first year at an airline to see if you took military leave then. If you go to a regional, plan on future airlines looking very closely at your leave records.