pipe dream.....

 

What should die is the way we stubbornly remain locked in a system that in no way works for the reality of the era.

We're still playing with a system that was designed for (and worked reasonably well under) a regulated airline system. News flash: Airlines have been deregulated since 1978! That's 35 years!!! When did we start to fall behind? I'd put it somewhere in the mid to late 1980's - about the same time managements figured out they could use our system against us. Yes, there have been a number of winners since then, but the reality is that is when the Lorenzos and Icahns began picking us apart. It's very much like the Martin Niemoller quote, "First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out-- Because I was not a Socialist." It wasn't too big a deal when the Continental got it, it was just the Continental. Then it was just Eastern. Then PanAm and TWA, and so on. United was at the top of the heap, then they weren't. Then Delta, then they weren't. USAir, American, Northwest, and so on.

Bit by bit, we've ultimately been losing ground over for at least two if not three decades now. As the old saying goes, insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result - I can find no other way to look at how pilots continue to do business than this.

I don't image creating a national seniority list would be as difficult as it was to create a pilot union in the first place - the real question is whether the current pilots have the mettle to do so. Sadly, it appears that the fortitude for such an undertaking is almost completely lacking, hence why I suspect until some outside force intervenes we will continue to see the decline of the airline pilot profession.

 

Excellent post bcrosier ! Your last paragraph hits the nail smack dab on the head and is the reason this profession has been slowly going down hill for a decade now. Is it reversible ? Nope. Simply for the reasons you've eloquently stated.

G'Luck Mates

 

Your dreaming

 

We tend to be pilotcentric here, but what about real wages adjusted for inflation of everyone? We are at 1968 levels:

US Worker Wages: "Not Off The Lows" | Zero Hedge

 

A Natl Seniority system is a pipe dream and would be easy to circumvent. Fact #1: Pilots are short-sighted greedy *****s and have proven themselves willng to sell their "brother" out if it means a few more bucks.
Fact #2: Pilots are short-sighted greedy *****s. Emphasized.
Fact #3: You could never force a company to hire someone of higher seniority on this list.
Fact #3: Pilots are short-sighted greedy *****s.

 

First try to get all the pilots at one airline to agree on one thing. If that ever happens, you can go on from there. By the way who is number 1?

 

NSL basically makes companies beholden to labor as stakeholders. Companies are only obligated by law to shareholders....

What? You thought America cared? bwhahahaha

 

Maybe most guys simply don't see it as you see it.

 

That may well be true.

Anyone who was flying for a major carrier;any of them, during the late 1980's and 1990's and thinks that this industry is the same as it was then is delusional in my opinion. Talk to someone who was employed then and compare wages. work rules, benefits, etc. with what their counterparts are encountering today and tell me that bcrosier isn't right on in his posting.

The sad truth is that he is right on target and as much as I hate to say it, the industry is in a slow downward spiral.

As Pogo (you may be too young to know who Pogo was) once so eloquently stated, "we have met the enemy and he is us". (Walk Kelly, 1970).

G'Luck Mates