Quote:
Originally Posted by Meworry?
Near as I can tell, you cannot go from 320 FO to 190 Captain, except for the original 140 pilots.
Let me put it another way. If you join B6 as a 320 FO, you are stuck at that pay rate until you upgrade to Captain in the 320. You cannot bid 190 Captain, so someone junior to you can get that paycheck and you can't. However, every 190 guy senior to you can get 320 Captain before you do. So there might be good reason to bid 190 in the future, depending on 320 upgrade time.
Meworry,
Not true. Guys who bid the A320 are type locked for two years. Plus all of us (after the 190 CA bid last week) are also now type locked in the A320. After two years an A320 FO can bid Captain in the 190. The carrot for the new guys is that there new 190 FO can bid captain in the 190 before our current type lock in the A320 expires.
Where the company's plans start to fall apart is 3-5 years down the road. When A320 upgrade time is approaching 4-5 years and 190 upgrade times approach over 2-3 years. You will then get guys going A320 FO for two years (type lock in A320), then 190 Capt for two years (type lock in 190), then finially Capt in the A320. When this happens, the training cost will go thru the roof. If you look thru our contracts or all of the 190 paperwork, this is what will happen. It is not prohibitted. Management even says they support the seniority system of bidding types, that is why the 190 Capt numb ers were incresaed from 100 to 150, to support the projected numbers people wanted/needed.
Thus 3-5 years from now, things will be different. How can the company fix this. Let the 190 have the lower pay for a couple of years, then finailly give them a pay raise to make it a minimal increase in pay to shift from E190 Capt to A320 Captain (be senior E190 capt vs junior A320 captain for only a small pay raise?), Plus to make the more senior E190 FO want to stay in type and go to the E190 Capt postion vs changing type and going to the A320 Capt, thus blocking more junior A320 FOs from bidding it.
It will all come down to time upgrade in each system from each system. I fear that we will eventually have guys jumping back and forth between types causing massive training cost (jsut like the other Majors). However if all Captains and all FO got the same pay (same as UPS, AirTran, Frontier, Alaska, etc). The desire to jump back and forth between types goes way down. Yes, some movement will occur based on seniority, bases, quality of life, but it would be way less than the system that JB is using right now. Not to mention this would fix the E190 pay problem. So in about 2 years, expect the pay to change, not until then. Hey, it is the same job with the same company with the same responsiblities so why not the same pay. JB always talks about being fair, well some time in the future they will finally live up to their talk. Until then it may/will get ugly.
Just my opinion...
FNG