i personally think seniority works for some things, but not others. For instance, I think the points system we utilise for leave works very fairly. If you bid for unpopular leave periods you build up enough points such that you can bid for popular leave periods and expect to get them.
Similarly, I think seniority coupled with the freeze periods after a successful move, works well with PRIAM bidding for fleet and status.
I am not sure how well seniority works for bidding for monthly work though. A bidding system should exist, whereby pilots get some say over when they want to work and the kind of work they’d prefer, but the level of difference that being senior or junior makes is currently ridiculous with JSS. Bidline at least created lines of work in a generally fair work distribution, and you had to pick one that had what you wanted, but more often than not had something you weren’t so keen on in order to get it. That meant the senior pilot could be happy they got the line they wanted, whilst the junior guy wasn’t being well and truly shafted. Now it is very much the case that the senior pilots pick just what they want and the junior guys end up getting shafted. Generally people want to work as little as possible, so the senior guys achieve that, whilst the junior guys have as many trips as possible squeezed onto their lines. Then they get global constraints and crew repair to mess with their bid so that they can have even more work squeezed in. Couple that with the fact the junior guys are paid less, and it really isn’t a fair system at all.
A points system for working weekends needs to be points for avoiding working weekends, not for avoiding reserve. The amount of reserve the junior guys have to do is already way more than what the senior guys have to do. It won’t deter the senior guys from avoiding weekend work. Similarly with trips, there should be a requirement for the system to get everyone as close as possible to the average credit per trip over the year. Junior long haul pilots doing 50% more reports than senior pilots is wrong.