overlooked
But one thing is overlooked. Notwithstanding the advantages of the seniority system for those who are in it, if you consider yourself the best airline, you want the most experienced pilots and when those pilots want to join, you cant put them behind a newby and let him/her wait for 10-20 years to have a command, not even talking about the risk of inverted leadership.(who is really in command if you put an 10000 hrs ex skipper as FO next to a recently upgraded FO with no command experience and less than half his time-It just does not work)
I know of several cases where a experienced skipper moved to a legacy carrier
one was a ex-sabena captain(B737/A310) who joined the bottom of the seniority list age 45, knowing that command might not come before retirement
Another a ex charter airline B767 Captain who joined KLM as a CoCo(second officer), spending the next 5 years sitting on the jumpseat after which he finally was allowed again to land from the right hand seat.
That was a choice, but most experienced skippers would be hard to convince to accept lower pay and degradation of position
What a waste of talent and experience. You do not make a experienced CEO an assistant to another. Or a experienced surgeon an assistant in another hospital.
If you claim that just because it is there it should not be changed, you have not noticed the rest of the world around you has been changed in the meantime and this will change as well, first the side influx (experienced guys put on the list amongst similar pilots) and then the whole seniority system.
If you as an 10-20 year FO have bet on the seniority system(and most of those are the guys in favour of it) and it all falls apart you should have started to think perhaps a bit earlier why you have chosen not to compete for the left seat by excelling above the rest but instead have chosen to wait until they finally should give it to you.....