Answers to stupid questions

[Blackhawk]

It's a catch 22, though. Go to a company with a great contract, wait 10 years for upgrade. Go to a carrier with a crappy contract, upgrade in 18 months. If your goal is to get to mainline, I'd focus more on upgrade time.

When I got hired I knew pilots with this mentality. I went with a carrier that had a better contract, but longer upgrade. I was told 5-8 years. A little over a year later I was a captain, while some of those who chased the fast upgrade ended up coming to my airline after four years of waiting. Upgrade is only part of the puzzle as mentioned above.

 

[poser765]

When I got hired I knew pilots with this mentality. I went with a carrier that had a better contract, but longer upgrade. I was told 5-8 years. A little over a year later I was a captain, while some of those who chased the fast upgrade ended up coming to my airline after four years of waiting. Upgrade is only part of the puzzle as mentioned above.

Exactly. Lots of people are really quick to say go to x because their cba has this, or go to why because their upgrades are this. the reality is not that simple. it's far more fluid. Most of us have our own reasons for being where we are.

 

[SlumTodd_Millionaire]

When I got hired I knew pilots with this mentality. I went with a carrier that had a better contract, but longer upgrade. I was told 5-8 years. A little over a year later I was a captain, while some of those who chased the fast upgrade ended up coming to my airline after four years of waiting. Upgrade is only part of the puzzle as mentioned above.

Pretty rare situation. Truth is, it's usually pretty obvious what upgrade times are going to be, at least within a 6-12 month margin of error. No, you can't just ask what the junior captain's date of hire is. That's where people get burned. You have to look at deliveries and attrition and run some numbers.

 

[PhilosopherPilot]

Pretty rare situation. Truth is, it's usually pretty obvious what upgrade times are going to be, at least within a 6-12 month margin of error. No, you can't just ask what the junior captain's date of hire is. That's where people get burned. You have to look at deliveries and attrition and run some numbers.

Plus lots of variables change the number around. For instance at my place of work, there are a lot of people who were hired a little over 2 years ago. That means a lot of people just moved over to the A320 after their 2 year equipment lock on the E190 expired, and are now equipment locked on le Bus. And that means that if they want to be E190 captains, they have to wait 2 more years. So in the last bid I went from 150 away from captain to 50 away with only 45 upgrades, mostly because so many people are all locked down on the A320. As a result, I think I'll get it in the June bid for a December effective date if there are very many upgrades at all. That will be 3 years on the nose, and I'm not complaining.

But I bet in a year and a half it will stagnate a little as guys who were locked become unlocked, and then bid over. But what do I know? Thats a long time from now!

 

[Blackhawk]

Pretty rare situation. Truth is, it's usually pretty obvious what upgrade times are going to be, at least within a 6-12 month margin of error. No, you can't just ask what the junior captain's date of hire is. That's where people get burned. You have to look at deliveries and attrition and run some numbers.

Not always so obvious, especially in a fluid environment such as we have now and will probably have for the next few years. In my case the unforeseen events were our purchase by another airline and the announcement of new airplanes soon after my hiring.
One of the "unforeseen" events that will probably happen in the next few years will be another Colgan 3407 as airlines with high turnover rates (quick upgrades), suddenly struggle to fill turbofan, swept wing airplanes with quality crews. One year upgrades means we will have many of these airplanes with very inexperienced crews. I've seen some hair raising FOQAs and ASAPs where crews have found themselves in situations (sometimes of their own making), where they had to use their superior aviation skills and experience to save the day. I don't know of many regionals that will be able to survive such an event.

 

[Flyboy57]

Your feelings about the practice aside, if you feel like having a significantly more successful preparation period for a regional interview I'd highly recommend spending a lot of time browsing through both aviationinterviews.com and WFFF.

IMO, you can actually get 60-70% of the same information that is "revealed" in the question bank that is opened by paying the additional fee simply by reading many interview reports on both sites and compiling the data yourself. I paid the fee, got out of it what I needed, then cancelled my subscription...and it was well worth what I paid.

I did the same. No regrets. Was told in the interview debrief that I was well-prepared. Added my two-cents to the website and told them to turn off the auto-renew once my time was up. $20 to get prepared for an airline gig seems pretty cheap in aviation terms....four gallons of avgas?

 

[falconvalley]

Years and years ago, aviationinterviews was free, if I remember right. In fact, I think donations were asked for, for a while. I still use the site, but I think the traffic was significantly less until recently.