NSL. Great idea but won't work any more than fission-powered airplanes.

 

I've never really thought much about a National Seniority List but after experiencing the current CAL/UAL SLI process, perhaps such a list would alleviate the heartache and pain that most pilots experience.

Obviously it wouldn't work by trying to place current pilots on a national seniority list right now, but what about starting a list with everyone hired onto an ALPA carrier starting (hypothetically) tomorrow. In other words, the new first pilot hired tomorrow would be number one on the National seniority list. It would take a good 25-30 years to flush out current pilots, but eventually there wold be a national list. Granted it wouldn't help those currently working, but it could get the idea of a national list off the ground.

 

I would vote in favor of such a proposal.

 

I think it's a foolish idea and can be manipulated to destroy a seniority system. Having an individual airline seniority system, for all its faults, keeps promotions fair, regardless what favors an individual may do for management to accelerate their climb over the backs of others.

 

I started my airline career in 1966. Long retired now. The "National Seniority List" talk was going on then as now. It will never happen. This isn`t a Teamster hiring hall, it`s a bunch of airlines with different pilot hiring requirements (yeah, I know, when mergers happen, the entire lists are combined, that`s different argument). Unfortunately, it is what it is. I wish you all good luck with your careers, mine was a good one.

 

The current system of labor representation has worked so well that today's pilots are working much longer, for less pay, with even fewer medical and retirement benefits than pilots received over thirty years ago. Maybe it is time, actually it is way past time, to consider, no, create a new way of doing business. The politics, tactics and technologies have changed dramatically since ALPA was formed in ---- (How many of you actually know when ALPA was formed?) yet ALPA is almost unchanged from its earliest design. ALPA, along with all of the other non affiliated pilot associations, has permitted the airline pilot profession to sink to the level of bus drivers, and my apologies to bus drivers. If you like the way things are heading today and you like being firmly planted in the middle class for most of your career do nothing. Be a "sheeple" and echo the pilot mantra, "There is nothing I can do about it, anyhow at least I have a job." Yep you make every airline CEO get a warm fuzzy every time you express this thought. Very sad.

 

You forgot to mention one thing: no shortage of prospective pilots willing to work for any amount of pay (in some cases, paying the airline - PFT) because, as most of them put it, "flying a jet is so cool!!!"

Universities and flight academies who constantly tell prospective students about "pilot shortages" while bombarding them with pictures of wide-body airliners and stories of the exotic lifestyle of an international airline captain are probably more to blame than airline managers. Airline managers are just doing their jobs and I honestly cannot blame them. Pilots willing to sell their own souls for the opportunity to fly the latest and greatest jet are the ones who give airline managers the ability to do what they do.

If anyone does not believe me, then peruse the Regional forum and take note of how many people constantly complain about the pay and QOL and then in the same breath put down every other profession because flying is the best job in the world. Yeah, most of these guys cannot afford to support their own families, but what the heck, beats working in a cubicle, right?!

 

Until someone steps ahead of you in seniority. Then you could not cry foul fast enough.

 

As a FedEx guy, I would never agree to that. I think the airlines would still find a way to race to the bottom. Just my .02

 

Glad to see this concept re-surface Rob. It's been almost six months since the idea was floated last.

First of all, it will never work. It's been discussed for at least 20 years and really hasn't even passed the "laugh test" to date. Who would administer such a list even if was feasible ? ALPA ? Now there is a happy thought. Talk about screwing the entire profession !

This idea should die a natural death.

G'Luck Mate