Originally Posted by
TACHO
Hours... which by default should mean if someone has been in a company longer they have more hours which would achieve exactly the same thing without restricting pilot movement, and someone junior still has something to work towards... I'm not sure what your getting at with factorisation, what has that got to do with seniority? Sim sessions, well of course, good grades in the sim is normally an indicator of whether one is suitable for a role no, regardless of seniority.
which companys offer the best Ts and Cs? Well I can think of one big one who's pilots all downed tools for the day not so long ago, which would leave me to believe they arent as amazing as you are portraying...
A couple of other operators I know in the UK have no seniority and I believe their staff are more than happy on the whole.
Seniority is an antiquated and flawed system and the only reason people are clinging onto it for dear life is due to their own personal investment into the system. If it didn't exist it would be better for ALL pilots. And as I've stated before, with regards to redundancy etc... it isn't worth the paper it is written on. Even WITH seniority there is all sorts of underhand maneuvering going on. If you like I could give you examples.
So let’s say you take only hours into account. Then guys coming from military, cargo or executive ops are putt in line behind the guys flying 900 hrs a year LoCo (or even 1000 hrs if they come from the likes of Lion air) whilst there operation might be more demanding. The person who does 5 years in Ryanair is not necessarily more experienced then the person flying in one of the above mentioned operations for the same amount of time. Also total time doesn’t say much about ability.
Your reference to AF “downing tools” has no relationship with seniority whatsoever. By your reasoning the above mentioned Indonesian loco should be the pinnacle of t&c’s.
there are plenty of operators to choose from that do not have a seniority based system. In fact, maybe even the majority and by your reasoning they should have better T&C’s. While I do know certain operators without a seniority system have good t&c’s I would like to believe that on average the ones that do have a seniority based system have better t&c’s. I also would like to believe they achieve a higher grade of unionization which leads to better t&c’s in general.
Edit: For management it will always be cheaper to hire DEC on CPT scale 0 then to do a command course (especially with horizontal movement) and to train a brand new FO at the same time.