How is PFT different from ... ?

Re: The Wife

Yes and Yes (depending on what part the flight is operating under at the time). Which brings back what DE said. The value of the time is questionable.
 
Re: The Wife

Good question. To log time as SIC, you would have had to have gone through the airlines 135 ground school. Still...after doing that...if you didn't show up to be the SIC would the plane still go? Even if an airline has approval to use SIC's, could they dispatch without one?

Your second question revolves around acting and logging of PIC time. If you were an approved SIC, could you log PIC time while being the sole manipulator of the controls? Maybe...I'm not sure. Heck...you can log whatever you want...doens't make it legal or prudent. I would guess that the folks doing the interviewing know the difference between acting as PIC...ie, you need a type rating most of the time and sign for the airplane, and just logging PIC time though an F/O timebuilding scheme.

There are no shortcuts to this career. While you may put yourself ahead of others with a time building scheme. The ones with the real experience and the ability to make good calls while doing the job are the ones I'd put in the left seat....but that's just me....
 
Re: The Wife

This whole argument about how 'evil' it is to have your resume walked in is one of the dumbest things I have ever heard. If I had a business and had to hire someone and an employee of mine recomended someone they know, I would give alot of weight to their opinion.

If I needed a plumber and my next door neighbor said Johnny's Plumbing did a great job on their bathroom, I might give Johnny a call. Am I unfairly discriminating against all the other qualified plumbers? Should I be accused of unethically choosing a plumber, when more qualified plumbers were not called? The answer is no. No one would criticize either action. Why is having your resume walked in any different?

Having a resume walked in is different than going into HR, throwing a bag of money onto the desk and saying "you should hire me over all the other applicants because I will pay you $25,000 if you give me the job."
 
Re: The Wife

"Having a resume walked in is different than going into HR, throwing a bag of money onto the desk and saying "you should hire me over all the other applicants because I will pay you $25,000 if you give me the job." "

Don't forget the part where "Oh yeah, You don't have to pay me"
 
Re: The Wife

[ QUOTE ]
Why is having your resume walked in any different?


[/ QUOTE ] Well I honestly think it depends on the person and the situation. If I ask someone for a referral and they say "yeah, so and so did a good job on my bathroom" I would certainly value that. But if they said "Oh my brother does that and really needs the work right now" then I'd think they had no knowledge of the persons preformance and was just helping out a relative. It's impossible to know when a pilot walks in a resume if he's doing it because he thinks the person is a great pilot and worthy of the job, or if it's because his wife's father made him bring his brother in law's resume. I just wish more people would have a chance to prove themselves in an interview, by their personality and their backround records, instead of just cause they know someone.
 
Re: The Wife

PFT and an internal reccomendation are two mutually exclusive completely seperate entities.

Personally, when I gave guys internal reccomendations, these were guys that I was willing to bet my professional reputation on. I knew if I reccomended an idiot, I'd forever be the guy who helped a dork get hired and would never be able to help anyone else out for the duration of my career.

Pay for training, (actually a misnomer, it should be called "Pay for a Job") is like arranged "bribery" for pilots. If you have sufficient experience, you'd get the job under normal circumstances, but your only prerequisite under a PFJ is the fact that your check cleared.
 
Re: The Wife

[ QUOTE ]
Pay for training, (actually a misnomer, it should be called "Pay for a Job") is like arranged "bribery" for pilots. If you have sufficient experience, you'd get the job under normal circumstances, but your only prerequisite under a PFJ is the fact that your check cleared.

[/ QUOTE ]

Why is paying for a job and not something more along paying for an internship? I'm sure they title you as a student, not an employee. With so many pilots going to PFT's, you can be the best pilot and have all the FBO hours you can get, meet all the mins, and still be beat out by someone who went to a PFT, so I don't see how you could say you'd be able to get a job without PFT as long as you have suffiecient experience. While I don't agree, still, with the companies that started PFT's, I just feel like you have to do what you have to do as a pilot to put your self in the best position to get hired. Maybe that includes PFT, maybe it includes having someone recommend you. I don't know how you can say "under normal circumstances you'd get the job", well then why not mail your resume in and hope there is something special about it that will move it to the top of the stack? Oh that's probably quite a gamble though, so you better find someone to take it on for you. But then there will be those other resumes there that have CRJ experience on them AND got walked in, so you better do what you have to do to be just as good or better then any resume in that pile, if you really want the job. So maybe you need to get your CRJ experience, and get it walked, and make the interviewer some really good cookies. (Or would the cookies be giving you an unfair advantage over all the other people who couldn't afford to bring in cookies?)
 
Re: The Wife

[ QUOTE ]
Why is paying for a job and not something more along paying for an internship?

[/ QUOTE ]
First off if a college student does an internship they aren't paying for the internship. They are paying to attend a particular school, but the company where they do the internship gets no money.

Second, when you do an internship you're there to learn about the business. It's not a permanent position.

Sometimes an intern does the intership, graduates and then gets a job where they interned. They may have an advantage because they interned there, but they aren't assured of getting a job just because they interned there.

I think in some ways you're confusing nepotism, which is the illegal practice of hiring a relative over a qualified candidate, with favoritism or getting a referring from someone in the company.

Nepotism is wrong, and even hiring someone based souly on a recommendation without an interview is wrong too. Paying someone to get a job, without an interview, without any qualifications or skills for doing that job is also wrong. It causes a lot of resentment among current employees and people who have worked very hard in order to become qualified for a given position. It could, could mind you, lead to people losing jobs. Think about it. You have a job, and one day your manager comes to you and says, "you're fired, because jr. over here will not only do your job without pay, he's actually paying me to let him work him.". How are you going to feel? It's this thought that causing all these jobs to go to India. Mangers here are saying, "Hell, why pay someone here $6/hr + benefits to do this when I can pay someone in India $2/hr and no benefits.

The truth of the matter is this, people are people. If your friend works for XYZ Company and says, "hey let me give your resume to my boss." They do this because they like to help people and sometimes they do it because they get a referral bonus. But typically that person still has to have the skills to do the job and still has to interview. If they don't that's wrong.

Again my two cents.

Naunga
 
Re: The Wife

[ QUOTE ]
How are you going to feel?

[/ QUOTE ] BTDT, bosses son was hired on with no experience and paid $4 more AN HOUR then I was. It pissed me off royaly, but there wasn't a damn thing I could do about it. If it was my son and my company, I'd probably have paid my son well too. (But I would have at least matched the current employees as well.)
 
Re: The Wife

Naunga - I agree with all of your post except:

[ QUOTE ]
nepotism, which is the illegal practice of hiring a relative over a qualified candidate, with favoritism or getting a referring from someone in the company.

Nepotism is wrong,

[/ QUOTE ]
Nepotism is neither illegal, nor wrong. I just pisses a lot of people off.
 
Re: The Wife

^^My bad.

Although I still think it's wrong to hire an unqualified person simply because he's related.

Se la vie

Naunga
 
Re: The Wife

Then you see my point.

So, think about how you'd feel if you had to work side by side someone with no skills who paid for the job, and now have as much chance to move up as you do? And that's why PFT sucks and why pilots don't like it.

From a consumer point of view think about this: How would you feel if you knew that one maybe two of the pilots up front flying you and your family for a fun-filled vacation didn't have enough experience to safely be flying that much airplane, but had a big bank account? It would first scare the hell out of me, then it would piss me off that the company (or pilot whatever) had that little regard for my safety.

Naunga
 
Re: The Wife

[ QUOTE ]
someone with no skills who paid for the job

[/ QUOTE ] Why does that mean they have NO skills? I don't understand that. I would think they had MORE skills after flying in a CRJ instead of making circles around the local FBO? Isn't that why they ARE getting hired? Because they DO have the skills? No airline is going to hire some one that they think DOESN'T have any skills.
 
Re: The Wife

Basically, PFT sucks depending upon which end your on.
I see the arguement for why PFT sucks at first, but I also heard it doesn't look good when your applying to a different company after you have completed the hours/time. At that point you should definitely be more experienced and could have the qualifications the company is looking for.
PFT sounds like a good deal to me if you can afford it.
 
Re: The Wife

[ QUOTE ]
Nepotism is neither illegal, nor wrong. I just pisses a lot of people off.

[/ QUOTE ]

Nepotism isn't a problem if the person who is your relative is well qualified for the position.

It is when you hire someone who's incompetent. In that case, you end up screwing yourself and your company.
 
Re: The Wife

TheWife,

I think I see where you're getting confused. There PFT programs don't only go after people who have regional mins. They only go after people who have a big bank account.

See that's the point. These aren't people who have the mins for an airline job. These are guys who may have never flown or have never flown anything larger than a 172, but they have the money to pay for a job. They don't build any experience until

They go out pay $50K+ spend get 250 hours training, and then are put in the right seat of an RJ. They paid for that seat. If you check out Gulfstream you'll see they want the whole load upfront. $50K+ upfront. That assures you 250 hours of training and 250 of paid time working as an FO, but guess what kids: How much of that $50K went to pay for your training and how much of it paid your "salary" as you get your 250 hours as an FO? Maybe I'm wrong, but I can't see why they'd need all that money up front. And it's misleading, I mean they show you a total for their "Module One" and it's like 490 hours total, but if you read the fine print it's only 250 hours in the plane. The rest is ground school. So then you do their "Module Two" which they show a total of 522 hours. Well again, read the fine print. 250 of those are your time as a FO. Not training. Okay so we're done to 272 hours of training left. So take out the 200 hours of ground school and your left with only 72. So you only have 322 hours of training in the plane (or a simulator) before you're flying grandma and aunt bessie to see cousin nell. Assuming the captain allows you to do anything but tune the radios.

Mean while you're getting paid, but again you don't meet the minimums at any regional (that I've seen). Yet you're working as a FO for a 121 carrier.

Here...you do the math. Here are the mins that ASA has listed on their website ASA Mins:
<ul type="square">
[*] 1,200 hours total time
[*]200 hours multi-engine time
[*]100 hours within the last six months
[*]Be at least 21 years of age
[/list]
Here's what Gulfstream gives you:

<ul type="square">
Module One
[*] 80 hours of dual instruction in a single
[*] 90 hours of solo
[*] 240 hours of ground school / flight briefings (120 each)
[*] 50 hours of Fraca sim time
[*] 30 hours of dual instruction in a twin
Module Two
[*] 80 hours of ground school and airline operations / indoc
[*] 40 hours of CRM training
[*] 80 hours of ground school in a Beech 1900D
[*] 32 hours of Fraca Turbo-Prop sim time
[*] 4 hours of Beech 1900D Aircraft, EFIS, and CPT Training
[*] 28 hours in a level-D Beech 1900D sim
[*] 8 hours Airline Line Observation Flights Beech 1900D
[*] 250 hours flying the line as a first officer in a Beech 1900D
[/list]

All that for $53,994...of course again reading the fine print: "After receiving $3,750 in flight training incentives, program cost is just $50,994." See that $3750 in "flight training incentives"? My guess is that's your salary for your 250 hours. Remember what I said at the beginning? I can fly 6 hours a week and log 300 hours in 50 weeks. Suddenly 250 hours doesn't really seem like a lot of flying time does it. Not to be anyway.

Esspecially when you consider that ASA requires 1200 hours total time. Okay, at Gulfstream you'd meet the 200 hours of jet time, but then again I expect that 200 hours is 200 hours of PIC not SIC time. The other thing that gets me about Gulfstream is that they say this:
[ QUOTE ]

How old do you have to be to learn to fly?
Answer: You can be any age to learn to fly. However, you must be at least 16 to solo (fly by yourself) and 17 to get a Private Pilot Certificate. In addition, to obtain your Commercial Pilots license you must be 18.


[/ QUOTE ]
They seem to imply here that they'll let you fly with them at 18. ASA won't even accept you (according to their mins) until your 21.

Again, I'm not a professional pilot. What I am is a student pilot who's pretty good and at finding a good deal. PFT is a bad deal. Why?

[*] Airline pilots who worked to get to where they are don't like it.
[*] The amount of money spent doesn't equate to the amount of time you get out of the program.
[*] You end up paying your own salary in some cases

Also if you think about it, you could do the first half of Gulfstream's program, and you would appear to have your PPL, ME, IR, and COM. Plus 250 hours of TT. I'd say you're pretty well qualified to fly sight seers in a 172, charters in a light twin or tow a banner over Myrtle Beach. Galmorous? No. You gonna build 1000 hours in 40 weeks? Probably not, but then again if you fly 20 hours a week. In 5 weeks you've done 100 hours. Do that for 50 weeks and you've got 1000 hours. So do a couple weekends or put in more hours here and there and yeah, you might be able to swing 1000 hours of PIC time (something you couldn't get at a program like Gulfstream) in 40 weeks or so. You gonna get paid to fly? Yep. Is it going to be quick and easy like PFT? No way, but I know for myself I'd feel much better about building 300 hours getting paid to fly, than I would paying to have a job flying.

Don't get me wrong. It looks attractive. You see, $54K for 1000 hours plus you get to actually work for an airline, for some young kid. He signed up in the blink of an eye, but if you read the fine print you find out that it's not the deal that it turns out to be.

Naunga
 
Re: The Wife

[ QUOTE ]
Nepotism isn't a problem if the person who is your relative is well qualified for the position.

[/ QUOTE ]

I second that!
 
Re: The Wife

Even if you go through PFT or nepotism, I really don't think they would let anybody without an inkling of how to operate that aircraft safely be a pilot. All it is is a plus situation for the company, they say I'll train this guy to fly our plane and I don't have to pay him. Hmmm, free trained and qualified labor......I don't think many CFO's will say no to that offer. Plus, this is another side of business for these companies. If they put some okie-dokes in the cockpits of their planes their business goes downhill. As we know, going downhill defeats the whole purpose of being in business.
I understand some may not like PFT, but is there a solid reason that says you don't gain enough experience to fly turbine aircraft?
 
Re: The Wife

[ QUOTE ]
Even if you go through PFT or nepotism, I really don't think they would let anybody without an inkling of how to operate that aircraft safely be a pilot. All it is is a plus situation for the company, they say I'll train this guy to fly our plane and I don't have to pay him. Hmmm, free trained and qualified labor......I don't think many CFO's will say no to that offer. Plus, this is another side of business for these companies. If they put some okie-dokes in the cockpits of their planes their business goes downhill. As we know, going downhill defeats the whole purpose of being in business.
I understand some may not like PFT, but is there a solid reason that says you don't gain enough experience to fly turbine aircraft?

[/ QUOTE ]

Most of the PFT outfits/schools exist because there's so many people willing to do it and that have the money. The only way PFT would go away is if the demand for it went away.

When you hear the guys that say "I love it so much I'd do it for free," there's the first problem.
 
Re: The Wife

Good post, Naunga.

And not to split hairs, but just so nobody gets the wrong impression:

[ QUOTE ]
charters in a light twin .

[/ QUOTE ]

Thats not really an entry level job that is attainable with 250 hrs. (or 1000 for that matter these days...).
 
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