Barrack Room Lawyer
...It is naive to think that companies do not know who their best people are...
Not naive at all, I would call it refreshingly realistic.
Just how exactly are the management of a large airline meant to know or assess who their best people are?
What criteria should they use in their assessments? How would they measure or assess the criteria they select? How relevant would those criteria be? How would they ensure a consistent degree of difficulty on assessments that took place in everday line operation?
In all likelihood, I suspect they would soon come to rely on a quick simplistic look at only those areas of airline operations that are easy to measure. Punctuality, Fuel Load, Diversions, Extension of Flying Duty Periods etc, all come to mind.
The consequences of assessments based on this sort of data would bring about the complete reversal and eventual demise of the current safety-based and safety-first culture that so many pilots, in many airlines, have worked long and hard to bring in.
...there is no airline that uses seniority for the selection of their training captains or training F/Os....
Im not sure if you were implying that training captains or F/Os are the best pilots in an airline, but if you are - and I speak as one who has been selected for both jobs - I would strongly disagree, as, I'm pleased to say, would most instructors!
Instructors are pilots who were selected to do a different job (instructing) to a line pilot, a job which requires additional and different skill-sets and abilities. Many instructors are excellent by any standard, many are good instructors but average pilots, and a few, sadly, are neither.
Conversely, there are many, many excellent line pilots, who have no interest in instructing whatsoever, and to discount or downgrade those pilots on that basis, or to assume that all the best pilots are instructors, would truly be naive.
...What is needed is a robust selection procedure that is open, honest, transparent and fair....
Most amusing, you really don't work in the aviation industry do you!
Perhaps we could base it on the recent dogma-driven
improvements in the NHS, whose new procedures earlier this year for the selection and promotion of junior doctors was such a success that it became known as Massacring Medical Careers?
If you think that a selection board which interviews pilots for promotion is the way forward, then all you will do is promote and advance those pilots who can interview well, and, in all probability, socialise well.
Personally, I think seniority is the worst system for selecting pilots for promotion....apart from all the others!
As for the ADA, I suspect someone will give your views a run in Court, in due course, but as for the interpretations the Courts will eventually place on its various sections, who knows!
Best regards
Bellerophon