Career Pilot: Flowing backward

In the seniority-based system of the airlines, that means that the last ones hired are the first to be laid off. In simplistic terms, if your airline has 10,000 pilots and plans to be only two-thirds of its pre-COVID size on the far side of this pandemic, then you can expect that about 3,300 pilots will have to be furloughed. Being laid off means that if and when the demand comes back and the company needs pilots, your job will be waiting—if you want it. I’ve met some pilots who have gone through multiple furloughs. Some are fed up and never come back to the airline cockpit. I can’t blame them. Furloughs can completely upend your life.

As always, seniority is everything (“Career Pilot: Seniority is Everything,” April 2018 Flight Training) in the airline business. Like a stack of Tetris blocks, many pilots slide down in responsibility and pay. For those at the top of the heap, the change to their life is minimal. They’ll still get their good schedules, keep vacations, and maintain their seat status—most likely captain. Those in the middle of the list, perhaps junior captains, will be displaced back into the first officer seat to fill in for those who were furloughed from the bottom of the list. At my airline, the pay cut going from captain to first officer is about 40 percent.

Like a stack of tetris blocks, many pilots slide down in responsibility and pay.Personally, I’ve been lucky to never have been furloughed during 20 years in the airline business; five of those years were spent at a regional carrier that I escaped before it failed. I have been forced from captain to first officer twice, however. While the pay cut will sting, I’m thankful to still have a job.

I didn’t fly from May to mid-August this year but thanks to the bailout, I was still being paid. Like many of my colleagues, my landing currency lapsed and I then couldn’t work. Since there was little flying, the company didn’t bother spending money to send us to training. Paid summer vacation? Well, not really, because there were few places to go to enjoy a vacation during the lockdown. In addition, my wife works and her job may end up being the financial lifeline for my family if the airline goes belly-up. This is not the first time she’s been in this position, thanks to airline instability and periods of low pay.

As of this early September writing, I’m back in the cockpit but now in the first officer’s seat of a Boeing 737 doing a job I last did in 2014. The procedures and flows are coming back to me and I’m enjoying my high seniority in that seat at the moment. That will change as more captains senior to me are displaced to the right seat and push me down. I’m also still being paid as a captain because our union contract stipulates that as long as there are people junior to me being paid as captains, I will continue to be paid as such. This likely will come to an end by the time you read this because a lot of displacement training is in progress. In the meantime, I plan to make hay while the sun shines.

Overall, flights are picking up, but very slowly as the country navigates this virus-laden reality. It appears there have been few infections linked to air travel, and that has instilled confidence in many travelers. Some airplanes are being plucked out of the desert storage areas and put back in to service. Load factors are increasing, as well. Rather than carrying just a dozen passengers in a 737 like April, I had one recent flight that only had a dozen open seats. The question is, can the recovery come soon enough to keep airlines afloat?