PSA Street Captains?

Plus, if I was a weekends-off, senior captain at a regional and then I had an opportunity to go to, say, Atlas, but my wife was concerned about new hire pay, losing my schedule and going back to the FO's seat, and I explained why this made sense and she still didn't get it. Well, when my regional starts parking jets and I start getting successively worse and worse schedules, my home base closes and now I'm commuting, I'm going to feel really sick for not making the logical decision and embracing the opportunity.

There are a lot of weekends off, senior line holding, drive-to-work captains on the BAe-146 at WestAir that probably had second thoughts about their career decisions when they look back 20 years today.
 
ATN_Pilot said:
And I might add, if you're married to someone who expects you to continue languishing in a crappy dead-end job just to make her happy, then you've got yourself a crappy relationship. Hence my feelings on relationships. :)
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Truth.

Besides, when she hooks up with former Johnny Football Hero on Facebook and disappears, all you're going to think about is how you'd be fat, dumb and happy flying the 767 for UPS making a lot more money and having a much richer experience if you had made a more thoughtful, long-term decision when the opportunity arose.

I know a guy this happened to. Didn't take the UPS job in order to stay at ACA and she ended up leaving anyway. Oof.
 
Derg said:
It's not 1998. It's 2015 now.

And out of the civilians in my class, I was one of two guys that had even upgraded and had far more experience than most of the military guys in class, at least time-wise. Granted I wasn't flying jets, flying MAC, dropping bombs on target (on time!) or mixing it up putting the pipper on a target during Red Flag.

If you're happy with offering the advice to not continually work on making yourself a better candidate and quasi-religiously saying it's simply providence and luck, knock yourself out. Las Vegas is luck and probability. Getting a job at an airline takes a lot more than putting a coin in a slot.

But in the meantime, I want to get good people hired at my employer because we need them. You're happy where you are and I'm proud of you for that, but don't mistake my participation in this thread as justifying the way they find candidates, I'm giving the people interested on getting onboard helpful tips and ideas on how to make that happen.

I have no need to convince you, specifically, of what I'm talking about. My goal is to reach out to that guy who wants to swing gear at SouthernJets that wants to learn about the process and get helpful tips to meet that end.

Remember, it doesn't matter what you think. They're not going to ask you how you feel. If you want to fly the jets, do what boss-man wants, or go fly jets somewhere else. It's a free country.
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You just flew with what we call in the animal kingdom hugeo-doucheness. This species exists in plentiful numbers, throughout the world, never in danger of extinction, self-centered, and are egotistical.
 
ATN_Pilot said:
Pilots tend to conform to culture, as part of being a professional pilot is being a chameleon. Pilots are constantly conforming to new captains, new checklists, new profiles, new SOPs, etc. It's just a part of the gig.


.
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Ehhh, to a point. But if you do NO selecting for culture, you'll end up with a different culture eventually. I guarantee if we start hiring per Delta criteria, in 10 years our culture will more closely match their culture that what we have now. It will be a blend of the two...which we both can probably agree would be a terrible, terrible thing. Submarine commanders walking around in blue shirts...oh no!
 
Derg said:
Do not take this personal because, after all, I do not know you and I just naturally type sarcastic. :) <— see? smiley face! :)

But if you can't make the case that a temporary cut in pay is going to quickly recouped in career advancement and, if you're leaving for a company where the paint on the side of the jet matches the paycheck or even a better career opportunity, it might be a good idea to discuss the economic principles of "opportunity cost".
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Man did you hit the nail on the head with the term "opportunity cost". Skipping over an opportunity that arises may look irrelevant at that moment, but it could become "eye watering" when you analyze the costs over the long term.

I could have looked at the application for the Delta Air Lines 737 Type Rating Scholarship and thought, "I'd have to take 30+ days away from work unpaid with no guarantee of a job, can't do that! I have a mortgage and student loan payments." It would have been easy to dismiss it and had little effect short term. The long term opportunity cost would have been huge.

It's a beautiful thing watching JC turning from tons of CFIs to tons of RJ pilots and now progressing to tons of Mainline pilots. I aim to help this trend continue. We ALL are lucky. This will be the largest hiring spree in the history of the Airline business. We are all lucky to be part of it.
 
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Trip7 said:
Man did you hit the nail on the head with the term "opportunity cost". Skipping over an opportunity that arises may look irrelevant at that moment, but it could becoming "eye watering" when you analyze the costs over the long term.

I could have looked at the application for the Delta Air Lines 737 Type Rating Scholarship and thought, "I'd have to take 30+ days away from work unpaid with no guarantee of a job, can't do that! I have a mortgage and student loan payments." It would have been easy to dismiss it and had little effect short term. The long term opportunity cost would have been huge.

It's a beautiful thing watching JC turning from tons of CFIs to tons of RJ pilots and now progressing to tons of Mainline pilots. I aim to help this trend continue. We ALL are lucky. This will be the largest hiring spree in the history of the Airline business. We are all lucky to be part of it.
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Wait, you're saying a free 737 type rating course would cost you time away from work unpaid? I can tell you right now, if you were a RJ FO, a months salary is still not enough to pay for a 737 type. So consider yourself lucky. Are you even married bro? :)
 
Culture is all in our heads. Corporations don't have culture. They have lots of people with lots of different ideas about life - the company "culture" is just a way to attempt to get them to forget their differences and pull in the same direction. Most companies that espouse culture have something far less altruistic happening beneath the covers.
 
ZapBrannigan said:
Culture is all in our heads. Corporations don't have culture. They have lots of people with lots of different ideas about life - the company "culture" is just a way to attempt to get them to forget their differences and pull in the same direction. Most companies that espouse culture have something far less altruistic happening beneath the covers.
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I think we are talking about different things. There's the yay yay, rah rah, "culture." Then there's the general personality types that the company attempts to hire. Those aren't really the same thing. The former is mostly BS. The latter is definitely real.
 
Way too many pages to go through to get caught up...

Anyone care to give the cliff notes version to the following:

Are these street captains going to be sitting on reserve for, oh...until the non-street captain hires at same seniority end up becoming captains?

I'm good sitting as a 7 year FO holding the line I want and still making the money I need to sustain basic life on this ridiculous planet.

Next, what really is the pay?
 
surreal1221 said:
Way too many pages to go through to get caught up...

Anyone care to give the cliff notes version to the following:

Are these street captains going to be sitting on reserve for, oh...until the non-street captain hires at same seniority end up becoming captains?

I'm good sitting as a 7 year FO holding the line I want and still making the money I need to sustain basic life on this ridiculous planet.

Next, what really is the pay?
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Cliff's Notes:

Be hungry.
Learn about the company that you want to work for.
Don't make the guy writing you a letter regret that decision.
Companies have/don't have culture.
@ZapBrannigan is a lesbian.

That is all.
 
7700 said:
I'm 3yrs at XJT (L-ASA) and would join PSA tomorrow if they hire true street CA's. But I can't stomach the 300hrs as FO year 1 pay with the "possibility" of upgrade.
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Sooooo............. this is the real situation then eh?

PhilosopherPilot said:
Cliff's Notes:

Be hungry.
Learn about the company that you want to work for.
Don't make the guy writing you a letter regret that decision.
Companies have/don't have culture.
@ZapBrannigan is a lesbian.

That is all.
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Oh Lord...somehow I doubt this thread really devolved that deeply. When I met @ZapBrannigan many many MANY MANY pre-furlough moons ago, I could have never told he was a lesbian, but now I'm very interested.
 
PhilosopherPilot said:
Ehhh, to a point. But if you do NO selecting for culture, you'll end up with a different culture eventually.
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Bull. The personalities of the pilots have zero impact on corporate culture. The blue juice has gone to your noggin.

ZapBrannigan said:
Culture is all in our heads. Corporations don't have culture. They have lots of people with lots of different ideas about life - the company "culture" is just a way to attempt to get them to forget their differences and pull in the same direction. Most companies that espouse culture have something far less altruistic happening beneath the covers.
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So perfectly said. Beautiful!
 
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