What’s the Big Deal About Seniority?

In the airline business it holds the key to many things, work-related and otherwise.

Sam Weigel

Friday, July 15, 2022 at 08:25 AM ET

Verified

The seniority system remains in place primarily because pilots have consistently chosen it. [File photo: Adobe Stock]

Key Takeaways:

The seniority system is a fundamental and unique aspect of airline piloting careers, chosen by pilots to govern virtually all professional life aspects, including work schedules, vacation, and career progression (e.g., aircraft, base, rank).
Pilots are ranked by date of hire, with senior pilots gaining substantial advantages in quality of life, preferred schedules, and advancement opportunities, while junior pilots have less control and often face less desirable assignments.
While preventing favoritism, the system's major downsides include binding pilots to their current employer (as switching means losing seniority), causing bitter disputes during mergers, and making the timing of one's career entry critically impactful. Despite proposals for reform, it remains deeply entrenched.

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A very old aviation aphorism holds that the airline pilot’s life is ordered on “sex, salary, and seniority—not necessarily in that order!” I’m not going to touch the first topic with a 10-foot pole, and both the lower and upper end of airline salaries are pretty well known. It is the seniority system that deserves a closer look, for despite being one of the defining features of a piloting career, it is a unique institution that seems rather foreign to most modern working Americans.

As mentioned in my last video, virtually all airline pilots in the United States are unionized, and those who aren’t work under rather union-like conditions. Beyond the airlines, many of the larger fractional, charter, and cargo companies have also chosen to use seniority for the purposes of aircraft assignment, upgrade, and scheduling.