On the serious side, any system would be fair as long as it’s transparent and consistently applied and instituted from the beginning. Company seniority, national seniority, hell even worldwide seniority, what have you. Personally I’m a US pilot grown up in a ubiquitous company seniority culture, and that’s where my opinion currently lies. But I’m sympathetic to the arguments for a nationwide seniority system based on the doctor scenario, or the senior pilot whose airline went bankrupt and is starting over at year 1 scenario. I might be persuaded to a national seniority system to address those scenarios, but I’d have to do a lot more thinking if it was an actual possibility on the table instead of navel gazing.
However, given that company seniority already exists and pilots have already invested their lives into their company seniority under pre-agreed terms, someone moving into a position other than the bottom would severely violate that, for anyone junior to that position.
Last edited by Vessbot; 1st Apr 2020 at 01:09.