So what you are saying is this:
I start Airline A and it is 5 years old. The first pilot I hired (DOH 1/1/2003, Seniority #1) should be slotted right underneath the #1 seniority pilot of the merged or buying airline? He/she is seniority #1 DOH 1/1/1973. When layoffs start happening the #2 seniority pilot with DOH 1/1/2003 keeps his job while the #3 pilot (from the older carrier with DOH 1/8/1973) gets laid off or bumped before the DOH 1/1/2003 guy????
Sounds fair to me. :blink:
No. No. No. the idea of relative seniority and career expectation is much more complicated. (And fair. Although there are certain pilots who prefer you don't understand this.)
If Airline A has 1000 pilots and Airline B has 2000 pilots, then your relative seniority is a percentage. If a pilot at A is hired 1/1/2000 and is # 500 of 1000, he should be placed right before or right after a pilot at B who is #1000 of 2000 and was hired on 1/1/1990. They are both 50% up their respective list and would each have a number of 1250 and 1251 of 2500 respectively. You can't say anyone jumped ahead, because their relative position didn't change.
Of course this is based on a pure slotting and 2 airlines who have the same pay scale and same equipment. There are also adjustments for the position held and the amount of money earned. If a pilot at airline A flies as 777 copilot and makes as much as pilot B who is an A320 Captain, then adjustments must be made. One of the biggest factors however is seat and fleet, since this generally equalizes the pay issue. For example, at UA a 777 or 747 f/o makes very close to what an A320/737 Captain makes. Therefore the seniority to hold either is similar. That is a major consideration.
So usually a snapshot is taken in blocks of fleet and seat at each airline and pilots are slotted together in groups that are similar. Think of seniority as currency where two countries are combining their currency. 20 Pounds Sterling might buy the same thing as 40 Deutsch Marks. You can't suddenly give them both 20 and 40 Euros and say everything is fair. One day they can buy exactly the same merchandise. The next one has half the spending money as the other. One day a pilot with 18 years barely has a job, the next day he is a captain. That's not fair either.
Your new seniority should be able to buy you very close to what you had before. Yes, that means putting two guys from different airlines with potentially vastly different dates of hire close together on the new list. But they can still buy the same position as before. as for attrition, you can always make adjustments, such as a 2 for 1 for example. For every 3 pilots who retire, 1 pilot from airline A can upgrade while 2 pilots from airline B can upgrade.
Then there is the difficult part of estimating fair future advancement. Yes, a 757 pilot at Delta never dreamed of flying a 747 to Japan. But he did have a real expectation of flying a 777 on long haul routes, at probably the same or more pay than a 747 pilot at NW. And in the future, one can assume that the merger brings more passenger traffic and greater expansion opportunities than each airline alone. So future aircraft and increased flying should be shared equally between the groups.
It gets very complicated, but it certainly can be figured out if both sides are willing to concede from time to time and accept reality. It's never going to be perfect, but if your career advancement, quality of life, and take home pay, is only affected by a couple of years one way or another, it is a fair trade to live in peaceful environment at a stable and secure airline that can whether the ups and downs of the industry. If everyone holds on to what they think they are entitled to without being objective, then it brings nothing but civil war.
