Perhaps most are like this but at least some are simply based on past earnings. One legacy does a look-back of the best rolling 12 months of the past 36, and the percentage is based off of that.
I've heard this before and I'm not sure I follow the logic of it.
Is it for the purposes of seniority integration? That airline A has captains at xx DOH, and airline B only had captains at xx DOH, and so airline A gets a bit of a seniority boost at that DOH range?
Because if that's what it is, then as long as other pilots are captain near or lower than one's seniority, then they would be lifted by that effect without necessarily being a captain themselves. I mean, they could be out on long term disability re-cuping from whatever, and they're still going to be put on a new seniority list between the two pilots that were above and below them on their own company's list -- there will just be some other new names scattered throughout.
Now, for the purposes of the above effect working in the case of a seniority list integration, if someone is the first to be captain at their seniority aka "the plug" then I could see that making sense for the feeling of skewing some line in a hypothetical merge scenario -- but if there are already captains junior to oneself I think they'd already be doing the heavy lifting in that category, should merge occur.
An additional reason you'd want to be a captain going into a merger is because you might not be able to hold it after the merger. This, of course, assumes no displacement bids.
I'll tell you why.
At VX/AS, the arbitrators called us "Red Circle Captains" and protected us. 5 years in duration from the SLI effective date (Dec 2018). So anyone a CA before the SLI came out is designated a Red Circle Captain and gets the following protection...
Say the economy collapses, business plan changed, etc, and now there are massive downgrades. I was a junior CA before the SLI and now get downgraded. On the combined list, lets say for this example there are 300 FOs senior to me who were FOs (obviously by choice).
Things looked bad, now everyone panicks and most want an upgrade ASAP (I assume this is where Southwest FOs are finding themselves, especially ones who skipped upgrade).
Now a new Captain upgrade vacancy bid opens. What happens?
With my Red Circle Captain designation, I get a "super priority" in that I will get a Captain award before one of those senior FOs does for the purposes of this bid award, even though I was junior, I was still a CA before the SLI came out. So the arbitrators protected that. The only stipulation is I have to put a CA bid in EVERY base in order to get this protection. The intent for red circle is, since I was a CA before the SLI became effective, I should now get reinstated to a CA spot before all those senior FOs who were FOs before the SLI date.
Hope that makes sense. It was strictly a protection made up by the arbitrators during the SLI. It hasn't played out because we've never had massive downgrades. All our Airbus reductions have been offset with Boeing vacancies so all red circle CAs were still CAs anyway. And now that we're almost 3 years into the SLI effective date, I doubt this red circle protection will kick in for anyone.
Every award that comes out, they also publish a list of Red Circle Captains. But I think it's pretty much a moot point now considering we had massive upgrade bids.
Hope that makes sense. So to summarize, absolutely it could help being a CA going into a SLI!
