Do the majors look down on 121 Supplemental work experience?

I don't think that would reflect as a bad thing. There are valuable skills you can gain quicker at a supp operator than regional. That said, supp usually doesn't have near the number of releases worked per desk vs. regional. Perhaps there is not near as much movement from supp as there is regional. There are probably some airlines that see someone working at a regional and think they have a leg up on a major operation, but both the regional and major partner are completely separate entities from a legal/operations stand point.
 
Another factor is that regional s likely employee far more dispatchers than supp operators and since a regional is the standard ground floor in a dispatch career, it stands to reason it would be recommended.
 
Delta Echo said:
I don't think that would reflect as a bad thing. There are valuable skills you can gain quicker at a supp operator than regional. That said, supp usually doesn't have near the number of releases worked per desk vs. regional. Perhaps there is not near as much movement from supp as there is regional. There are probably some airlines that see someone working at a regional and think they have a leg up on a major operation, but both the regional and major partner are completely separate entities from a legal/operations stand point.
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What would the work load be at a regional on average? At my airline Im usually at 50-60 releases or so per shift.
 
Nakruh01 said:
What would the work load be at a regional on average? At my airline Im usually at 50-60 releases or so per shift.
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It would likely top out at 40-50 over the course of a shift. If I may ask, what type of flying do you work now? 50-60 in a shift is a lot of flights.
 
Delta Echo said:
It would likely top out at 40-50 over the course of a shift. If I may ask, what type of flying do you work now? 50-60 in a shift is a lot of flights.
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Charter flights, fleet of 737's. Might have exaggerated on the number but at one point I have had to do upwards of 60 releases in a night before having another dispatcher assigned to help. We fly sports teams, various private charters, deportation flights, contract scheduled flights to Cuba and South America, and during the summer we flew charters within Europe.
 
Nakruh01 said:
What would the work load be at a regional on average? At my airline Im usually at 50-60 releases or so per shift.
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I've seen workloads routinely hitting 70 for the morning shift at the regional level. Afternoon shift takes over about 30 to flight follow and then sends another 45 or so.
 
who'swho said:
I've seen workloads routinely hitting 70 for the morning shift at the regional level. Afternoon shift takes over about 30 to flight follow and then sends another 45 or so.
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70 in a shift is a brick wall of releases. The most I ever saw was 3 desk each with two shifts covering 120 releases and that was do to management not JRA when they very well should have
 
Nakruh01 said:
Charter flights, fleet of 737's. Might have exaggerated on the number but at one point I have had to do upwards of 60 releases in a night before having another dispatcher assigned to help. We fly sports teams, various private charters, deportation flights, contract scheduled flights to Cuba and South America, and during the summer we flew charters within Europe.
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That is a lot of interesting and unique planning experience.
 
As a noob studying for the ATM test right now, this topic sparked my interest. Is "supplemental" carrier effectively pax carrying charter ops? I know the FAA definition, but I was wondering what an example would be, and what the difference between 121 supplemental and 135 ops would be? Thanks you smart people :)
 
///AMG said:
As a noob studying for the ATM test right now, this topic sparked my interest. Is "supplemental" carrier effectively pax carrying charter ops? I know the FAA definition, but I was wondering what an example would be, and what the difference between 121 supplemental and 135 ops would be? Thanks you smart people :)
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The short answer is yes. However supp ops can also include charter cargo operations. 135 is small air taxi aircraft with less than 19 seats IIRC.
 
I started out at a 135 / 121 supp. Never hindered me any, though I was initally concerned it would. I wouldn't sweat it. A lot of times the supps pay better than the regionals as well. It all really comes down to the particular hiring manager though I suppose.
 
Huge difference between supplemental within the 48 and the few international supplemental carriers. Depending on the carrier they could value a year of supplemental after a year of regional as worth more then two years of regional experience.

Someone put it to me when I questioned if I made a good move, “three years of experience in the regionals is like the same year repeated three times. In the Wild West of a supplemental international carrier three years is three years experience.”

No offense intenteded to those in the regional only boat. I thought it was good and I’m happy I did 121 Supplemental International, even happier I kept fighting for better though.
(P.S.) I’m talking outside A012 possible cities as “international”
 
This is incredibly true, I'm coming up on year three at my current 121 supp operator and it never seems like I've plateaued. While the overall amount of flight releases per shift is lower, you're doing more of the behind the scenes trip planning and typically at smaller airlines dispatch wears almost every hat when it comes to flight operations.

Mainline_or_bust said:
Huge difference between supplemental within the 48 and the few international supplemental carriers. Depending on the carrier they could value a year of supplemental after a year of regional as worth more then two years of regional experience.

Someone put it to me when I questioned if I made a good move, “three years of experience in the regionals is like the same year repeated three times. In the Wild West of a supplemental international carrier three years is three years experience.”

No offense intenteded to those in the regional only boat. I thought it was good and I’m happy I did 121 Supplemental International, even happier I kept fighting for better though.
(P.S.) I’m talking outside A012 possible cities as “international”
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Nakruh01 said:
Charter flights, fleet of 737's. Might have exaggerated on the number but at one point I have had to do upwards of 60 releases in a night before having another dispatcher assigned to help. We fly sports teams, various private charters, deportation flights, contract scheduled flights to Cuba and South America, and during the summer we flew charters within Europe.
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That's some good experience. South America is always fun!
 
Listen if you have experience working for a Supplemental on heavies they ought to have a healthy respect for your experience. The majors all have fancy computer programs to do most of the work which the supplement's cannot afford. So you will have to know and do stuff that no one at a major would even have to think about knowing or doing. I worked for a couple of supplemental's in my career and got do to some really cool stuff I couldn't at a major.
 
SteamgaugeSweetie said:
Listen if you have experience working for a Supplemental on heavies they ought to have a healthy respect for your experience. The majors all have fancy computer programs to do most of the work which the supplement's cannot afford. So you will have to know and do stuff that no one at a major would even have to think about knowing or doing. I worked for a couple of supplemental's in my career and got do to some really cool stuff I couldn't at a major.
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Right now, the hiring process at most of the majors is highly political. I think UPS is the only of the six majors that doesn't do much if any internal hiring for dispatchers and has an experience requirement. The rest hire a significant amount internally without any experience. Outside of a few classes here and there, Fedex and Delta are entirely internal in their hiring now.

Everyone wants in on the passenger major big paychecks. Everyone in MEM wants to get one of the high paying Fedex GOC jobs. Those that don't get hired often have access to lawyers wanting a piece of the major airline money. With these constraints, HR and/or the hiring managers need to make sure the balance of each class is such that it prevents lawsuits.

I would say that the thing that can hurt someone at a supplemental most is not the experience they have but the fact that they get a smaller piece of the hiring pie. There are fewer supplemental dispatchers than regional dispatchers and also internals that want to transfer to dispatch. Thus a class at a major might only have one or two at the most if any at all from the supplementals and the rest some kind of mix of internals and regionals.

For that reason, I wouldn't recommend working at a supplemental unless UPS is where you want to be. You want to work somewhere that gives you the highest percentage chance of making it to a major.
 
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