Quote:
Originally Posted by atpwannabe
I was gonna start a thread about this Friday night, however, I didn't want to come across as putting the horse before the cart so to speak.
At any rate, say for instance if I'm hired by Regional Airline XYZ and they have a base in ATL. How do newly hired FO's get the base they want? How does the seniority thing work?
atp
Heres the simple version....
Say your airline has 400 pilots. 200 pilots in each seat (captain and FO) and 2 bases of equal size (say JFK and LAX)... 100 captains and 100 FOs in each base. Seniority is done in the order in which you are hired.
You then have 4 positions...
JFK CA
LAX CA
JFK FO
LAX FO
Pilot #1 gets to pick where they want to be. Pilot #2 gets to pick where they want to be as long as there are remaining spots in that position. Say all top 100 pilots want JFK CA. Pilot #101, although he wants JFK CA, he cannot hold it and gets his choice of the remaining 3 bases. If being in JFK is important to him, he may bid JFK FO waiting for JFK CA to open up. If being a CA is important to him, he may bid LAX CA waiting for JFK CA to open up. All the way down to pilot #400 who gets the last spot remaining. Typically, once you are in a position, you cannot be pushed out of it.
When people move on, a base gets bigger, or something like that, they may need 10 additional pilots for JFK CA. The top 10 pilots in other positions that want it will get it. This may result in less than 100 pilots being in the remaining base. Say these 10 JFK CA spots are filled and there is a net loss of 10 LAX FOs.
Now the airline has to hire. They need 10 pilots and they will all be sent to LAX as FOs. If JFK is in high demand, for the foreseeable future, every opening in JFK may be filled by senior LAX pilots. You might not be able to hold JFK until 50 pilots above you are given the opportunity. Or it could be the other way around.
Hope that clears things up. Typically the least desirable base has the best seniority movement (people getting out)... that means better schedules quicker and quicker upgrade. If you want a base where everyone wants to be, prepared to wait a long time for anything to happen. You may even have to wait years to be able to be a reserve FO.