PermFO,
I completely agree - people will bid for a promotion if they get a payrise. It is the system that's wrong - not the participants in it. 747-400 fleet pay across the board (with an appropriate freeze period) would IMHO sort out some of these issues.
Personally, I don't think there's much more too it than that the powers-that-be are sick of some guys staying at the top of the tree until they get a vertical promotion on the 400. Particularly when they have come into the company with a lot of previous experience.
When it comes to loyalty to family or company, not many of us need to think too carefully about where our primary loyalty lies. If the company wants our loyalty they should be prepared to pay for it. We all have bills to pay - why would some people volunteer for a pay drop when the same bills still need paying.
Also, I have not seen or heard of any great failure rate in the vertical promotion training path to warrant this action. And no, I am not one of the permanent S/Os. In fact I have been an F/O on both the Classic and the 767 in the last three years, so I have already done my two years on other jet types. Personally, I found doing an upgrade on a type I hadn't flown before to be very difficult - it is not just the aircraft, it is the route structure the people and the philosophy which are all different. In my opinion, doing a vertical promotion on type would be easier since all of the other variables (except for the bottom 5000 feet) are already known.
Keg, while your (and my) seniority on the 767 could slip for a short time, we could also find ourselves on the MRV sooner than we thought as a result of this action. But self interest aside, I still don't think that it is fair to suddenly turn the system on its ear. I think that a grievance procedure could be warranted in this case, and it will be very interesting to see AIPA's reaction to a group that it has not felt a lot of sympathy for in the past.