Originally Posted by
Trossie
Read Earnest Gann's "Fate is the Hunter". He decided to get out of the airline industry when he flew with a First Officer who was much older ("[he] had been flying when I was in knee pants") and immensely more experienced than him. "... beside me sat a man victimised by the numbers, else he would never have been my co-pilot." Failed business skill had put this pilot who was legendary for his flying ability into the right hand seat and "The most simple arithmetic argued against his flying as captain again until he was a hundred years old."
Skill and experience count for absolutely nothing when seniority comes into play. Pilots consider themselves to be 'professionals' but can anyone name any professional vocation where your place, starting from the bottom, is rigidly dictated by 'the numbers' (seniority). Doctors? Lawyers? Engineers? 'Seniority' is a trap used by management to ensure 'loyalty' and pilots fall for it like fools. Until the management screw up and that whole seniority-based job pyramid is shattered and those pilots find that other managements' seniority systems are now working against them. Captains are by far the biggest victims of 'the numbers', once their 'number' is shattered they are nobodies and "behind a newbie from flight school". A 'seniority number' is a shackle that will condemn you to nobody-ness once the dice of business (loaded by incompetent management, external fanatics, or too many other factors) land the wrong way.
Modern airlines tend not to use seniority.
and those "modern" airlines tend to have conditions way worse than the legacy carriers that ALL are still seniority based. Also, every pilot union supports seniority, management would rather be able to offer individual contracts and have the pilots bid down to get the job. Skill and experience get you the job, from then on, you can only do your job the way the company wants you to do it. Yes, we should all be the best pilot we can be, but for a lawyer or stock trader the incentive to outdo his colleagues works, for us it doesn't necessarily. For all it's flaws, seniority works better than the alternative.