Al Shuffler
Perhaps my post seemed a bit too harsh and in all fairness your post was a reasonable one. I'm a mild mannered chap really.
I agree with South Coast ie seniority is not perfect but it is
transparent. Fairness, I would argue, is in the eye of the beholder!
For example: imagine a FO who has just got the minimum hours for a command in his non seniority company. He/she has got good grades since joining the company direct from training. All of the TREs have flown with said individual and the Fleet office pencil them in for a command course.
Then a rival company, flying the same type, go bust flooding the market with type rated pilots. The company, to save money, decide it will be cheaper to employ one of the experienced Captains leaving our FO to wonder "if only we had a seniority list!".
The reason this argument keeps going around is that there will always be winners and losers. For me the big
pro with seniority is at least you know where you stand. Not perfect I will grant you but at least you can make some, hopefully, intelligent career choices. However, there is still a large element of luck. I started 2001 at the top of one list, with a command on the horizon, changed jobs and was on the redundancy list at the end of the year. It was a gamble but I still think I made the right choice.