Seniority Rules!

 

So, unlike many industries, the Airline industry in general employs what’s known as a ‘Seniority System’ for the promotion and benefits a pilot gets. This is the system that controls our career progression, so let’s take a look at how it works, what it means, and why we use it.

 

So, first things first, let’s start at the beginning, when you’re first hired into your airline. Upon hiring you’ll be given a number equal to the number of pilots in the airline, say 600 for example. This is your seniority number, if someone above you retires or leaves, say number 356, then 357 will take his position, 358 will take 357’s position and so on. Everyone slides up, and you at number 600 will get number 599, and a new First officer will be hired and get number 600. Simple? Some of you may be thinking that there may be an issue that could arise here, what happens if two pilots are hired on the same day, they can’t both get number 600 can they? Well, no they can’t. Depending on the airline, the way of deciding who gets the better number can be decided on a range of criteria such as but not limited to; ATPL Exam results, date of issue of CPL, Age, Alphabetical order or coin toss even. Where I work we employ all of these criteria in that order to determine who will get the better number. Situations like that can arise when a large group of pilots join an airline, such as perhaps a batch of cadets fresh from their training.

 

So now that we have our number, what can we do with it? Well, many things in an airline go on seniority such as, what routes you fly, will you be on standby, what aircraft you fly, who get’s upgraded to Captain, who gets a position such as “Senior Captain”, who get’s to become a training or check pilot, who get’s to chose the holidays they want, who get’s to chose the days they work, you could even say that seniority decided who get’s first choice of meals on board flights as where I work it’s always Captains choice and more. So what do these benefits mean to pilots?

 

So how is being able to chose your route a benefit? Ever had to get up at 3 in the morning to catch that early morning flight? Well so do pilots, and to be honest, we don’t like them that much, after 5 days of dragging yourself out of bed at 3 in the morning, flying can become rather tedious. The opposite can also be said, no one likes arriving back into an airport at 2 in the morning on the last flight in of the day, it can really be a case of last one to leave the airport turn off the lights (Indeed it’s been asked of me and others many a time before after arriving in on the last flight of the day, no joke), you arrive home to your bed at 3:30 in the morning, fall flat on your face, and get 4 hours sleep before you’re woken by the screams from downstairs of “Has anyone seen my school bag?!?!” and the clatter of feet as the wife and kids run off to work and school, leaving you on your own till 3pm that afternoon, where once again you leave the house and don’t touch down at your home base till 2 am. Not exactly desirable. So with a bit of seniority, you can get that nice easy flight where you’ve to be at the airport at 10am, and arrive back home, touching down at 5pm with the day’s work done. Nice! But it’s not only the early starts though that determines how attractive a route is, far from it.

 

A route could be to a congested airport in busy airspace such as LHR. It could be to an airport like Madrid where you can’t but wonder who allowed the controllers to sit in the tower. It could be to an airport that is prone to bad weather. It could be a roster than has 4 or even 6 trips in the one day! It might be to an airport where the typical passenger isn’t the easiest to work with and may be more boisterous and rowdy, such as Ibiza. It may be a route where your handling agent at the far end doesn’t seem to have much care for their job. Many of these things however, can be avoided once you stick with it long enough and gain some seniority, then instead of flying through poor weather in central Spain, or carrying rowdy passengers back from Ibiza at two in the morning, you have the afternoon flight down to NCE in the sunny south of France, with a lovely visual approach and a fair bit of manuvering close to the ground to remind you that you’re a pilot, nice handling agents on the ground, a typically nice set of passengers, and a nice round trip length of only 2 hours each way. That’s what you really want to be flying.

 

Aircraft choice also comes from seniority, to begin with you’ll start you career on small jets on international flights between close countries within Europe and North Africa, however after 5-6 years you’ll have gathered enough seniority to make it onto bigger jets, the wide-bodies, flying longer distances, and with the lifestyle that goes with being a long haul pilot. While some pilots may like the bigger aircraft due to their size and performance, for most it is the opportunity long haul routes. An advantage of flying long haul over short haul is that you’ll approach your annual limit of 900 flight hours much quicker than you would flying on short haul; this means that you have more time to spend at home doing the things you like.

 

Holiday choice also comes with seniority. If two pilots bid to have the same day off, and there’s only slack in the system for 1 pilot to be off that day, then the more senior pilot will be allowed use up his holiday on that day.

 

Of course, just because you’re the most senior FO and next in line for a position as Captain doesn’t mean you’ll automatically get it. You will still have to pass your proficiency checks and command course before you can upgrade, but you’ll be given the first preference for doing that course, and if you make the grade, then you’ll get your promotion to the left hand seat.

 

Why do we use seniority in the Airline industry you might ask? Why can the ‘best’ pilot not upgrade to Captain first? Well, that’s one of the things that make aviation different to many other industries, we’re all paid to act the exact same as one another and do all the exact same things. We’re paid to be exact robot copies of one another, to do everything in the exact same set out way. This of course allows us to switch between different Captains and Co-pilots each day, yet still know exactly what the other person is doing. With that in mind, how would you judge who’s the better pilot? The smoothest landings, the least accidents, the lowest burner of fuel, the one who diverts least, do these sound like good criteria to judge who’s the best pilot? Well, one thing’s for sure, that if we did judge on some of those criteria, we’d see accident rates shoot up. You’d have pilots pushing the limit, taking as little fuel as possible, flaring too long and floating down the runway to make sure they didn’t ruin their perfect smooth landing record, pilots choosing not to divert but to push into airports even if they don’t feel comfortable, all to get their spot in the left hand seat. Also keep in mind that the Captain will be the one with the final say in fuel figures for a flight, so the Captain the FO will have the most influence over the fuel burn figures a FO would have to present to become Captain. This doesn’t encourage safe behaviour, nor is it fair. So what else could we use? Reputation? Well that wouldn’t be much better either, then you could find more experienced FO’s being skipped over because another FO’s son is friends with the son of the pilot in control of the promoting, or because someone plays golf at the right club, not much better, much less transparent and much more open to corruption.

 

This of course leaves us with the tried and trusted method of seniority. Where you do the grunt work, work your way up the food chain, and then your loyalty and hard work pays off, the longer you stick with your company.

 

Hopefully this has given you an insight in to what a seniority system is, how it works, what it means to us, and why we have one.

 

Regards,

Snr. Captain Rónán O Cadhain.

 

 

 

There we go Chuck, sorry for forgetting about this, enjoy.

 

Regards,

Ró.

 

This post has been promoted to an article

Good Stuff , I enjoyed reading that, the piece left me wanting more from the author (as they should), like what different grades of Captain do?

 

Best CJ

I could indeed write a shorter article on that for 2-3 weeks time on that subject if you like.

You started the first four paragraph's with "So,"... A pet peeve of mine is any sentence that starts with "so".

Well, I think it still works if you remove the "So", so let's do that then instead, you're the boss... :wink:

 

Regards,

Ró.

 

Edit: Gosh really seems like I like the word "So", LOL... :blush:

Edited January 19, 201313 yr by Rónán O Cadhain

change it to "once upon a time...".LOL

change it to "once upon a time...".LOL

I can only think of one airline that doesn't use seniority, and they're probably the worst airline in the world to work for. It's still the best system to use in the industry, despite it's old fashioned nature.

 

Regards,

Ró.