Lewbronski

Just venting, because for some reason it's the collective wisdom of the great pilot Borg mind and it'll never change, but man, it hit me again today how nonsensical it is for us to not have some sort of national seniority list that would allow lateral moves between airlines.

At a previous airline's new hire training, the director of flight ops came and talked to us. We were in the middle of negotiations. He literally snickered with delight describing how if customer service agents didn't like it at our airline, they could just move to another airline or another similarly-paying job. But not pilots - and this is where he snickered - pilots have to start over at the bottom if they decide things are so bad they want to jump to another carrier. "Pilots," he gloated, "are stuck. They can't do that. They can't leave."

And you know what? As much as that was a negotiating power move and all, the guy was and is right.

Do professors or doctors or attorneys have to start over from the bottom if they decide they want to move to a new school, hospital, or firm? In fact, one of the reasons software engineers are paid so well is because they CAN jump ship from one company to another. Companies are forced to pay up in order to retain their software engineers. That wouldn't be as true if software engineers lashed themselves to one company for life the way pilots do.

Anyway, just venting. It'll never change. But I really wish it would.

flyguy81

You wanna spend decades investing time in a company to make it great only to have someone with literally 5 min on property sneak above you on the seniority list?

I don’t. The only reason I see that would be a benefit is if your company liquidates so you don’t have to start at the bottom. It’s unfair to pretty much everyone else who stuck it out and didn’t choose “poorly”

at6d

How would that integration work? Imagine that “merger!”

ZapBrannigan

I will happily accept national seniority based on my date or hire at very first union job in June of 1996.

ZeroTT

professors do well to make as much as a regional captain

attorneys largely build a local client base and, if successful, are very tightly bound to that one place

doctors likewise build a reputation and it is difficult to move - certainly difficult to make a big move up

all of these professions have better mobility than pilots but it’s rare that someone can make a major forward leap mid-career

BrazilBusDriver

Can't remember where I saw the stat, but I read the best software engineers are an order of magnitude or two more productive than the mediocre ones...unlike, say, the productivity of pilots, where the difference is a rounding error - a flight takes how long it takes and you can't work two at once, one by yourself, etc. This is true for IT, too, in general...and those super-productive people live and breathe what they're doing to keep up with the changing tech/language in vogue/etc. And they are on the electronic hook to respond to emergencies, customer issues, and their bosses' whims. They often leave to increase salary and to regain anonymity.

Still looking for that perfect situation, too, but I gotta admit I came back to it because this gets close. You get mastery, you get autonomy (especially in the left seat), and (with seniority) you get schedule control. Not a lot of professions where you just show up and do your job.

ShyGuy

This isn't really true. I come from a family of doctors, they could easily move to another state (and some states offering more than what they make now). They just choose not to because they like where they are right now.

ZeroTT

I come from a family of doctors too! yes the skillset is portable. Docs don’t end up like a PanAm pilot.

But High paying gigs tend to be procedural and you build a referral base over time. A mid-career physician has, depending on specialty, cannot quickly replicate a practice if moving.

RJSAviator76

The issue isn't necessarily "portable seniority" but rather pay portability and how pay is determined, structured and banded. Why is there so much difference between the top and bottom FO and then captain and FO, especially in today's age of CRM where if the captain screws up, the FO is also on the hook. There is also an arguable difference in relevant experience between say an F-teener and a regional airline captain. Not to take away anything from F-teeners, but their learning curve tends to be substantially more vertical than say a regional airline captain. Why are they both getting paid the same starting out?!

I've always maintained that seniority should reward loyalty, but it shouldn't be the end-all-be-all. For example, schedules and vacations should absolutely be by seniority. Pay should be more about experience. Lumping it all together doesn't benefit the pilots. It actually hurts us because 1) unlike other unionized sectors, we already can't strike when our contract is up and 2) we can't vote with our feet if we have any sort of longevity because of how we structured our compensation. And finally, watch this thread... you'll have pilots defending the very system that hurts their ability to make more money and enhance their profession.

Lewbronski

Wow RJS, for once, I agree with most everything you said. Blue moon?