Considering leaving the profession for good, could use advice

[Cherokee_Cruiser]

Eh, I’m vehemently against this. @🦈💜 should not have to worry about correcting someone on this if it’s a misstep. If it was, a quick apology should be the end of that. You shouldn’t have to hide who you are as a human being, just to get a job. The rest of playing the game, I digress.

Sorry, I don’t buy it. Everyone hides - to a degree - who they are, in order to get a job.



I’m a Sbarro/Subway loving introvert who couldn’t care less about hanging out with you on overnights. I’m here to fly your planes safely and take care of your passengers. I’m here to fly and get paid, I couldn’t care less about any of your volunteer projects. And no, I don’t volunteer anywhere. I have enough crap going in my life at the moment that takes up my time and my *present* focus is on my wife, kids, and my job.

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Honesty scale: 100%

Hireable answer: 0%

 

[JordanD]

Interesting indeed where the Jewish hate, and full-on Hamas terrorist support, is coming from in the blue parts of the USA.

Will the real Nazis please stand up? At least these people are showing clearly who they are.

Anti-semitism has been simmering and rising in the US long before October 7, sadly.

 

[Cherokee_Cruiser]

I am going to assume you didn’t realize who the person is behind my username.

Do me a favor and replace trans with Jewish in your statement, does it make it any less true? It doesn’t. That is why I stand with trans and LGBTQ people because the people who want to hurt you also want to hurt me.

I live in a city that is always ranked in the top 10 as safest cities for LGBTQ+ and Trans people, how do you think that happens?

And no city is perfect, the bigots are everywhere. Last month some bigot made it very clear he wished I was un-alive for no other reason than I was Jewish. Two awesome guys who also are on this website made it clear that wasn’t going to happen.

Good luck, I am going to enjoy one of the biggest prides in the US this weekend in my city.

The airline industry loves to squash trans names.


Trans World Airlines. Gone. Now, red blooded American Airlines.


Air Tran. Gone. Now, one of the most conservative pilot groups, Southwest Airlines.

 

[Cherokee_Cruiser]

Interesting indeed where the Jewish hate, and full-on Hamas terrorist support, is coming from in the blue parts of the USA.

Will the real Nazis please stand up? At least these people are showing clearly who they are.

I’m still trying to wrap my head around “Queers for Palestine.”


Um, what?



I hope they realize, that part of the moose lamb world? Well, let’s just say they’re aren’t exactly your allies when it comes to literally all things Queer.

 

[MikeD]

Sorry, I don’t buy it. Everyone hides - to a degree - who they are, in order to get a job.



I’m a Sbarro/Subway loving introvert who couldn’t care less about hanging out with you on overnights. I’m here to fly your planes safely and take care of your passengers. I’m here to fly and get paid, I couldn’t care less about any of your volunteer projects. And no, I don’t volunteer anywhere. I have enough crap going in my life at the moment that takes up my time and my *present* focus is on my wife, kids, and my job.

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Honesty scale: 100%

Hireable answer: 0%

You see, it’s because you don’t want to volunteer for projects, why you’d be the best fit for them.

 

[Maximilian_Jenius]

The airline industry loves to squash trans names.


Trans World Airlines. Gone. Now, red blooded American Airlines.


Air Tran. Gone. Now, one of the most conservative pilot groups, Southwest Airlines.

Bro... as tone def as usual. Read the temperature of the mf-ing room. Not funny, not cool!

Probably an attention trap. But it needed to be said. But that's the really sad part.

 

[ppragman]

I also really, truly don't care about money, and the money was never the focus of the thing. I'm not in this career for money. I'm in because I love flying, and because I want quality of life, and right now I have none. I have no interest in "the brass ring" or anything of that nature. I would love a career that I can be loyal to and enjoy for a few more decades before I call it quits.

First off, good talk the other day. Still, we talked about this a bit, but... go fly medevac. High quality of life, nocturnal schedule, work with cool people, make a difference. It's that or find some other segment of aviation to explore. One of the best things about single pilot is there's nobody sitting next to you to give you a hard time. Also, one of the worst things about single pilot is there's nobody sitting next to you to give you a hard time.

I also will not be pressured into conforming

Then I suspect 121 is not for you - I doubt you will be happy in that environment. That's fine, I would have done it for the money but deep down I know I wouldn't have been happy (though, it is hard to be unhappy when you have a sailboat). Still, 121 is probably the most conformist sector of flying. You're literally required by the company to dress like a bellhop because Juan Trippe had a uniform fetish 100 years ago.

But it's also not necessarily true - you'll conform sometimes. Aviation is conformity. Let's say you were flying an airplane with synthetic vision and ADS-B in and there happens to be a small cloud in front of you - you probably navigate around it even though you know that there is no real risk to go through it, you know there's nobody else on the other side. You likely stop loading the airplane at max gross - or do some shenanigans (moving bags to the overhead or whatever) so that you're under MGTOW on paper, even if it's only 100lbs or so and you could never tell the difference in performance anyway. That's conformity.

When you go through training, you conform to the requirements of the operation. The term in the industry is literally basic indoctrination. No, you'll conform to things you agree with, but not to other things. That's fine, I am/was mostly the same way, but it probably precludes a happy career in 121. A successful career is possible, but probably a happy one is not.

and tough love is bullying, not care.

different people come from places "hurt people, hurt people" and the like.

That said, some of the best and most important advice I have ever gotten has been "tough love." Advice is like a butthole though, everyone has one, so you can take it or leave it. People may not know a better way to show they care than bluntly tell you what they think. I wouldn't let it bother you.

Best way it’s been put to me a very long time ago, when I too have gotten frustrated at places I’ve been: “Daff, here’s the lowdown. This place is train that moves along at 5 mph. You can get in front of it and try and pull it, you can get behind it and try and push it, or you can get on it and ride along. But no matter what you do, it only moves at 5 mph. No more, no less.”

Damn this is good advice, especially for my new job. I know it wasn't directed towards me, but thanks for sharing this.

Time to pivot; AS didn’t hire you… pivot to another carrier. Don’t want to work for another carrier? Pivot to another sector of aviation. Just like “paying dues” you have to play the game in order to advance. You can’t upend the Monopoly board in life and then be upset when you have to restart the game over from square one. So don’t start over again… pivot.

This is glorious advice.

• CLEP is a good suggestion, though I'm determined not to get a degree until after I have a job so that I have a purity of motivation for it.

Why? I mean, who cares? You can do both - you can want to study something and you can see it as beneficial to you. I did that when I studied math, then I did it again when I got my masters. And guess what? It's paid off, I'm gainfully employed now and I really liked what I studied. Remember, going to college doesn't guarantee a job, it's just possible that it could help.

The quest for purity is silly - nothing is fully pure.

Don't stand in your own way, you're totally smart enough for it. You're not going to look back at 85 or whatever on your death bed and think, "if only I hadn't gone to college." Also, I think I've said this in other places, I don't think you need college to be a pilot or even a good person (there are loads of • humans who are also college graduates), but still, doing something that's hard that you don't want to do that requires doing what you're told largely by people you don't trust or respect is... (and I hate to say this) kind of good for people to experience.

College is hard - the material is not - the actual experience of suborning yourself to the whims of others is hard, but it's a really good thing to learn to do.

 

[BEEF SUPREME]

Interesting indeed where the Jewish hate, and full-on Hamas terrorist support, is coming from in the blue parts of the USA.

Will the real Nazis please stand up? At least these people are showing clearly who they are.

Worked with more than a few at XOJET but no one believes me about it. Most of the guys I flew with that were hard core antisemitic wound up at SWA.

 

[Cherokee_Cruiser]

Bro... as tone def as usual. Read the temperature of the mf-ing room. Not funny, not cool!

Probably an attention trap. But it needed to be said. But that's the really sad part.

It’s a light hearted post in a thread gone too serious.

 

[drunkenbeagle]

Sorry, I don’t buy it. Everyone hides - to a degree - who they are, in order to get a job.

As someone who has done the interviewing, this is not true. I'm not interviewing who you are. Or what you look like, or what pizza you like.

I ask questions relevant to the job role. Mostly situation based ones, taking notes on what you did and why. My company has some things they care about, and task me with asking questions to see what the applicant would do in similar situations.

Someone as the job applicant should have it pretty easy. They get to pick the story they want to tell. If they know what Google is, they should have some idea of what good and bad stories are. And they shouldn't sound clueless when I ask them "When was the last time you had to tell your boss no, and why?" Hint, hint - have some answers to questions like those ready, hopefully that got your boss promoted and saved the company some money.

 

[drunkenbeagle]

And no city is perfect, the bigots are everywhere. Last month some bigot made it very clear he wished I was un-alive for no other reason than I was Jewish. Two awesome guys who also are on this website made it clear that wasn’t going to happen.

The world needs more than two of them right now.

 

[///AMG]

And they shouldn't sound clueless when I ask them "When was the last time you had to tell your boss no, and why?" Hint, hint - have some answers to questions like those ready, hopefully that got your boss promoted and saved the company some money.

Not sure if you do 121 hiring, or some other area (sorry, I should know this by now, I just can't remember at the moment), but I'd say that if anything, this actually highlights how stupid the process is. Do you all actually believe that "I told my boss no and it saved the company millions because he/she was so inept" is a common situation? I've been an employee for a long time, and recently stepped into the "boss" role in one job, and I can honestly say I have no story that resembles this hypothetical scenario. Most of the other dumb questions are worded in a similar way, with bated breath about how you will answer. Nobody applying to a pilot job is saving the world, or the next CEO. They are applying to spend a career flying the line, and hopefully not ever be noticed by management until they have their retirement shindig. I'm not saying this to take a jab at you or your employer personally, just highlighting a trend I've noticed. You say that the company is trying to evaluate people based on the job requirements or something, and then this question is asked, which at very best, requires a person to answer very "creatively" (when the reality is, 99.99999999% of the time) that they just showed up at report time and didn't ever crash. We aren't a community of really impressive business people. I feel like that should be common knowledge Maybe I just suck at life though

 

[derg]

As someone who has done the interviewing, this is not true. I'm not interviewing who you are. Or what you look like, or what pizza you like.

My friend who does interviews for an airline knows exactly when you're lying or misrepresenting yourself.

It's not that hard to notice. Pilots are generally narcissistic and when they think they're getting away with something, well, lets just say the interviewers already know but are trained to not give non-verbal response cues or show anything other from a blank face to a polite/generic smile.

 

[derg]

Not sure if you do 121 hiring, or some other area (sorry, I should know this by now, I just can't remember at the moment), but I'd say that if anything, this actually highlights how stupid the process is. Do you all actually believe that "I told my boss no and it saved the company millions because he/she was so inept" is a common situation?

Oh god, of course not. Those stories are generally BS, but the question is, are the parts of the story giving the interviewer any light on what they're looking for in an answer. Your story doesn't amount for a hill of beans as long as it isn't canned because you're looking for things that aren't obvious to the candidate.

"How would you handle a diversion" isn't an operational question whatsoever so when you start going rote like "expanding your team", calling operations, getting the weather, briefing the approach, blah blah blah, all that stuff is irrelevant. They're generally looking for something else that isn't evident for a reason.

It's algebra. Everyone knows c^2=a^2+b^2 where a = 5 and b=7, SOLVE FOR C.

"The answer is 8.6!" which would be correct, but big deal, who cares. There's going to be a follow up that will be interpreted as the interviewer 'pressing to test' or being aggressive or 'good cop bad cop', they just need you to paint the portrait of how you derived the answer. People will then get emotional and defensive and it colors THEIR performance for the rest of the interview then they're talking sh— on the internet about how mean everyone was and how "I was too strong for Pan Am, they only want the weak and THAT"S NOT ME!" — happens all the time.

The answer is "Well, is a^2 with a being 5 is 25. B^2 with b being 7 is 49. 25 + 49 is 74. Now taking the square root of each side of the equation satisfies C^2 making it merely C and the square root of 74 is 7" <— the THOUGHT process is what counts. Even if the answer of "7" is ultimately wrong/inaccurate, the method was on-point and the room is satisfied.

"I'd go around" isn't the answer to a landing at the wrong airport question. Let the interviewer hear the process behind that. What tools did you use, what resources did you use to determine that you were at the wrong airport? How did you convince a reluctant, perhaps psychologically checked-out captain to push the thrust levers up and extend his duty day? How did you handle the pattern back to the correct airport? How would you handle it upon landing? Did you mention a PA? You know darned well the lead FA called because it seemed weird, what did you tell him? Were you honest or dismissive? What you think is a softball operational question most likely is a customer service question or a CRM question and people get too focused on "max power, props forward, positive rate gear up"

Very few questions are about WHAT you did. It's HOW you would do something and a good interviewer is going to present the question and let you paint the picture. Paint a robust picture, get a job. Throw out a canned answer or tell the interviewer what you think they want to hear, do not get a job.

You may say "Oh yeah, I had the gate agent come down to the jetway, called up the rapper as well and did a jetway huddle including the lead flight attendant" and everyone knows it's BS because a gate agent would tell you to kiss his grits, the ramp agent is too busy and your lead FA has her own stuff going on, but that's not what the interviewers are looking for.

They're looking for something else. So when people think they lied their way into a job, that's just the narcissism talking. I'm being completely honest with everyone.

 

[Cherokee_Cruiser]

Well, no matter what you come up with at Delta for interviewing, a Deltas R Us interview prep company is gonna get the low down and start charging serious dough.



Frankly, I think interviews should have a tech and sim portion (the flying aspect), and no, not everyone can fly - they are pilots on paper. The second you do that, by tomorrow morning Deltas R Us interview prep will have the exact profiles and offer a 777 sim mimicking yours in ATL.


Ditto for these TMAAT stories. At least one company feels SO confident about beating your interview process (as in getting hired), they offer a money back guarantee if you aren’t hired. Now that’s some gangsta level confidence in their prep work.




I don’t consider myself a social expert - but give me half a day with someone, and I can tell you with probably around a 90% accuracy if they’ll be good, tolerable, intolerable, and/or or a-holes for a 4-day trip. In my own interview group at my shop, 5 of 11 were hired. By lunchtime, I had seen enough to mentally guess 5 people that shouldn’t be hired based on what I’d seen with them that day. Of the 6 not hired, all 5 were in that group.



Oh and narcissism? I did the job fair rounds in 2016 and 2017 and hit him the big 3. Delta was the most narcissistic of the group to stand in front of. United was a little more relaxed, and AA was the most chill.


The reality is, it’s all BS. Simply a product of supply and demand. 2022, 2023 were desperate, so the BS died down. It was easy to get a call, interview, at the big 5 in those years. The economy slows, Boeing screws up, deliveries slow, and hiring comes to a trickle, and the BS level goes up again.

 

[derg]

I work for SouthernJets.

That was more of a 'take the guidance or not' post, not an airing of grievances or soliciting opinion because you're not an expert in this domain, whatsoever. We have knowledgeable people in the bullpen ready to answer questions with little need for your four-crayon approach to coloring in subjects you know little of.

Otherwise, yet again, we ruin a good discussion, riddle it with grievance and pithy opinion where there are actually those that have subject expertise.

In other words, please shut up, I'm trying to help people.

 

[🦈💜]

My friend who does interviews for an airline knows exactly when you're lying or misrepresenting yourself.

This is a total sidebar, but: That's incredibly unlikely.

Here's a decent aggregation of some data:

Can you tell when someone is lying?

You can't spot a liar just by looking, but psychologists are zeroing in on other techniques that might actually work.

www.bbc.com

(This piece is high on fluff, but it does reference some research. There's actually a LOT of research out there. Another good example (and excellent read) is: They Called 911 for Help. Police and Prosecutors Used a New Junk Science to Decide They Were Liars.)

Ultimately, at the end of the day, the way to determine if someone is lying is to listen to the stuff they're saying and have an interactive discussion with them, not to have them tell you a story and try to judge their verbal/non-verbal cues, word choice, etc. Different people respond differently to different stimuli, have different levels of anxiety, and are, in fact, just very different from one another.

I'm putting this out there in the unlikely event that somebody actually cares about the truth of that sort of thing.

 

[Rosstafari]

I think the planned Rastafari transformation would be a better retirement.

THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE

 

[derg]

Sasha, that's absolutely fine what you found online, however I will say that few people in the business of 'asking questions' ask what they already don't know the answer to. That article will not help in the pursuit of your goals at all because the airlines have what you want, and you want what they have and many of us can help you bridge that gap as many of us have unique skills and experiences which are tremendously helpful for motivated pilots.

An example: the fun part is when people lie in their logbooks. No one is ever going to divulge how tremendously easy it is to figure out, but an interviewer will never show their cards and allude to knowing but the candidate may get some peculiar questions as the cat bats around the lethargic mouse before eating it.

I'm more than happy to help forensically discover what went wrong the day of the interview with EskimoAir, privately. Because when an applicant steps through the door, the team wants to hire that applicant. However, in the interests of time and a full plate of other stuff going on, I cannot serve at a "meta" or pin cushion for grievance. Again, I'm trying to help you toward success but have zero interest in airing of grievances because it's counterproductive.

Like my mentor of almost 30 years says to people I bring to him for career counseling: "If you do the work, you will achieve your goal. If you want to call and complain about how unfair hiring is, I'm not your guy". I brought him a guy who got fired from SouthernJets because he made a series of ridiculously stupid decisions, lied about it, doubled-down, then changed his story again, maligned several people and I assumed he was toast. A few months of work and now he's at one of the top three (not mine) carriers absolutely flourishing.

(*) I'm willing to help you personally reach your goals as I have certain experiences and perspectives 'north' of the average line pilot. It sounds arrogant, of course, but it's the truth. I also know several people that had a similar personal journey that I'm happy to get you in contact with that can provide guidance. HOWEVER, my role would absolutely not a sounding board for grievance or what you feel is wrong with any sort of system because how we feel about the hiring circus is moot.

The ball is in your court. When in doubt, re-read the paragraph with the (*)

 

[Autothrust Blue]

We’re hiring at least 1200 this year.

Which, in living memory, is still wildly (groan) unprecedented (groan). BTW, you gonna be at the head shed next week?

Or, with emphasis added:

There has never been another time better in my living memory to be an airline pilot seeking employment at another airline/air line.

Don't stand in your own way, you're totally smart enough for it. You're not going to look back at 85 or whatever on your death bed and think, "if only I hadn't gone to college." Also, I think I've said this in other places, I don't think you need college to be a pilot or even a good person (there are loads of • humans who are also college graduates), but still, doing something that's hard that you don't want to do that requires doing what you're told largely by people you don't trust or respect is... (and I hate to say this) kind of good for people to experience.

My Mom doesn’t merely go to college, she teaches college - and she went back in her fifties and went straight through to a master’s degree and got a job lecturing in the department, in fact. I doubt she regrets any of it, even if Cal Fac wages are simply unamazing. It’s never too late, and while I often, especially when I’m feeling particularly…miffed, shall we say…joke that someone can borrow my degrees as they haven’t done me any good, that’s wildly false. I remain convinced I would not have been hired at my first aviation job without my undergraduate education, and I still am convinced that Spirit, despite not requiring one at all (spoiler: slightly more than half of the pilot group still had a B.A. or a B.S. aaaaanyway), was impressed I was going to grad school nights/weekends. I am also convinced that I am effective outside of the flight deck because of both my undergraduate and graduate education.

I had the opportunity to speak to all three of my Mom’s history courses earlier in their semester, as one of the ‘older’ graduates of the University (2003 establishment), and while I’m sure some of those students were in that class to check boxes (god knows I did enough of that too) I also guarantee they will get something else out of every class they take outside of their major. It might not always be something written down in a learning outcome somewhere, but universities are wonderful places preparing people to participate as informed citizens in a republic.

This is more of a societal thing but it’s apropos to this thread too: Why do you think people are trying so hard to tear down colleges and universities and diminish their value (including some people who fly airplanes, themselves the embodiment of considerable technological progress and an amazing triumph of our first hundred years of slipping the surly bonds, and darn well better ought to know better)? It’s not accidental. An educated citizenry imbued with compassion and curiosity is the single best bulwark against tyranny there is, far moreso than any amount of firepower ever amassed or any opiate of the masses ever conceived.

Finally, too: Unless you’re an incredibly lucky unicorn like Steve Jobs or Bill Gates, the latter of whom came from money in Seattle anyway and never had to worry about basic security, your best odds at social mobility come from getting a university education. And your best odds of being able to feed yourself if you do lose that First Class are going to come if you have that piece of paper, and preferably some skills and knowledge thereunto appertaining.

So I’m going to continue to unapologetically tell people who are seeking employment in this industry to go to college. Granted there’s a large smacking hint of “works for me” in this, but it doesn’t merely work for me—it’s worked for a lot of people. Even the guys that I worked with that majored in Fraternity Drinking, I mean, like, Business or whatever, at Florida State, and not ‘real’ disciplines.