Historically turnover in UK airlines has been minimised by the provision of the Final Salary Pension Funds and the Seniority Schemes. Combined, the two encouraged pilots to remain in a company and wait their turn for a Command.
With the demise of the FS Pensions I wonder if the time has come to modify or abandon the Seniority System and encourage pilots to move employers more often, thereby driving salaries and conditions up.
It is interesting to see in last Sunday’s papers that one of the reasons for easyJet taking over of Go was that they were unable to recruit sufficient pilots to facilitate their expansion.