Geezzus..! There's more members of the "Flat Earth Society" than I thought.
ACMS, therer are many, many people who are from 'legacy' carriers that dont support datal seniority. I am one of them, although I now work as a contract pilot for a company that both employs DECs and promotes on qualifications, experience and performance; a most frightening concept for some. Particulary those who have been in a sheltered workshop for several years.
Given the extraordinary growth in air travel over the last years, where is the commensurate growth in salaries in the legacy airlines. QF salaries now lag CPI. Your SOs and FOs at these legacy carriers can get promotion by either staying where they are or by changing employers. When Pilots are given the opportunity for other employment options, it
increases the scope for promotional opportunities as you no longer have one employer to choose from. This creates an
induced demand for your services and as a result the market has to offer higher salaries to either attract or retain your services.
Everyone benefits, including those trying to 'protect' their patch.
Krusty (that's RALPH btw), I have no, I repeat, NO desire to go to REX. I am aware of some guys who have significant SAAB and Dash8 command experience who
might take positions at REX in a T&C role...if the price is right! However, why would these people want to take an FO slot and wait months for the upgrade? Why would they? Go from an management salary to line FO if even for 8 months makes the whole exercise a waste of time. As a result, the corporate memory and expertise or REX will continue to fall until the airline is an operational basket case. You sound like you did you apprenticship (over 6 years). How do you feel about guys with 8 months in multi crew operations having command of a flight? I dont know how the DFO can sleep at night.
LHR. THe guys that I spoke of did not fail their command ride, but a pre-command check that was apparently run by a someone who wanted to promote their mates. They got an upgrade at the next round of promotions and did just fine.
"Joined the queue". Yes, I've heard that expression many times. So where does the 'Q' start? What is the criteria of ranking? Should it start with date of joining? When you got your CPL? CTL in a multi-crew aircraft? Jet command hours? There would be no reason or incentive for me to join a company at the bottom of a 'list', that's for sure! Why would I place myself (12,000 hrs+, Jet command and additional qualifications) in a 'queue' "behind" some 1200 hr sprog fresh from the aeroclub, just because he started the month before me? Ridiculous! No other industry embraces this method of promotion to the extent that ours does.
Let's not forget that you made some assertions that safety would suffer from an abandonment of 'datal seniority'. We still await the evidence. Perhaps you could be a little more objective in the future.
If the removal of seniority has
not led to better terms and conditions, how can you explain some of the massive salaries that are being offered in the contract world at the moment? The reality is that datal seniority regulates the industry to the extent that we cannot get market rates for our services.
When I tell buddies in other professions what Air Pilots put up with in paying for ratings, travel allowences, pay for endorsement, pay for interview etc, etc they CANNOT BELIEVE IT! They sometimes think I am making it up! Why has the growth of salaries for Pilots' so significantly lagged behind the growth od salaries for other professionals? The only real difference in employement practices and promotional opportunities is that in many companies, we are often expected to start at the bottom again when we change jobs. This means that people are not likely to move to another employer and thus, the existing employer has a captive pool of staff.
The result is inferior terms and conditions.
Ah well, off to work; another day, another $2,000...
