Military does it.....

They do, but in order for the airlines to do it you would need to set up a chain of command structure and a rating system. The military doesn't do that great of a job at it judging by a lot of the people who make rank and command. Do you really expect that model in the airlines to be any less then a complete disaster?

Unfortunately though, the military doesn't really care how well you fly when it makes those decisions.

That's how you get some not so great pilots, who are great at playing the queep game, promoted to O-5/O-6 and above leadership positions. The Air Force is especially good at this.

Not saying that is great, but mediocre pilots “promote” just as well through pure seniority

The Navy grades carrier landings. That can affect your promotion potential.

Other than that, it's pretty much accomplish the mission without breaking anything is a pass, and you compete on leadership and management.

The company I worked for closed thier flight department, rather than sit around on a severance and let my skill set atrophy waiting for another corporate opportunity, I decided to give 121 a shot. I guess that makes me a poor decision maker, along with many airline/corporate pilots that have lost their jobs when a business ceases to exist or makes changes to its business plan.

Yep, seniority is how a union rewards time in service. I guess the same way they track the talent and worth of the many thousands of non-unionized CPA's, auditors, and analysts at the big four accounting firms, or the same way they do it for many thousands of non-unionized workers in IT at Google, Microsoft, and Apple. How about the thousands of pharmacist's that work in retail, or pharmaceutical companies? There are many large non-union businesses that are able to track and promote the performance and progress of their employees. It's not a new concept.

You can grade many jobs on efficiency and innovation, but this isn't one of them.

Airline pilots can't really innovate... it's way too regulated.

In aviation in general, there's a very fine line between efficiency and safety shortcuts. While much of corporate aviation operates in or below that grey area, most airlines do not.

Returning to flying from being a mid level manager in a non aviation field one of the first things I noticed flying again was how nice it was not being micro managed; isn't that one of the perks of this career? I guess they could pay someone 100k a year to sit in every jump seat and micro manage so we can have the privilege of being paid on performance instead of seniority and experience.

I seem to remember reading Continental used to pay based on efficiency (fuel burn), so all the pilots would throttle back to get the bonus. Continental had the worst on time performance and went bankrupt, but they were saving money!!!

Enlighten us then, what metrics would you use to determine pilot pay? Number of sick calls? (Probably illegal and encourages people to fly when they’re sick). On time performance? (Enjoy getting paid less because you’re a reserve showing up to an already delayed flight or because you’re based somewhere with inefficient ATC or Deice). Fuel burn? (Enjoy seeing on time performance tank).

There already are performance based incentives in the form of profit sharing, because accounting for all the various factors that can cause an individual pilot to be more inefficient than another are next to impossible to quantify.

A pilot’s job, at the end of the day, is to show up on time, perform their duties in the allowed quick turn time, safely fly the airplane, and go home. 99.99999% of pilots do that every day. Whether one has a greasier landing than another has 0 impact on the comapny’s bottom line. The minuscule percent of pilots that are constantly causing delays can be dealt with individually

This guy is just jaded he can’t kiss a** to get ahead. He’ll find himself in management as soon as he can.


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