SWA a stepping stone airline

Richman said:
Weird about the DPE shortage. I remember when the FAA took over ALL initial CFI rides. It took an act of God to get a ride with a DPE, and that was only if there was a six month delay or more at the FSDO. And there was a super minimum number that were still authorized.

Getting a DPE gig used to be really, really tough. You needed to be either dialed into the local aviation community TIGHT, or they had a need for a one-off rating or to do something specific since the ONE other guy died and you happened to be right place, right time.

The only airline guys and gals I've seen make it work out are those who had "grown up" at that location, or were long time members in the local aviation community, and was a "well known person of character" to the local FSDO.

These days, if you're retired, you'd need to build that up from scratch. You could volunteer for whatever local safety program the local FSDO has, and just work at it constantly. Probably take a couple of years and some good luck.
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Wonder if some FSDO guys retired out and decided to make money.

At my flight school there was a DPE that was notorious for failing even the best students. It was thought he would want to collect on the reexamine fee.
 
The DPE shortage, as I understand it, is more about the FAA and less about the availability of qualified pilots who would be DPEs.

Weird rambling nostalgic sidebar warning: I also absolutely love driving 175s. And I really do love being captain. But I do also miss being able to contribute to local aviation. I've been a member of AOPA since ~1997, and flying is one of the most meaningful parts of my life. I still WANT to fly aerobatics, get my glider rating, fly fire, and so on.

I remember my first flight instructor back in 1996 ... he had thousands of hours, but was desperately trying to get into a regional gig, so he was doing multi instruction to build his multi time. Ended up gear-upping an Aztec with a student.

When I was first learning at PFN, there used to be a freight operator that flew Beech 18s. I remember when they were warming up on a cold morning, shooting flames out the exhaust. I always thought I'd love to do that.
Being an airport rat, I made friends with a corporate pilot who flew a Beech Duke, and he took me up a few times on repo flights to get mx on the ac. It was such a big, amazing airplane.
Then there was the day I got invited to go for a ride in 909 by the Collings crew as a 17-year-old. Talked with the pilots afterwards about flying it, and he told me once I had my commercial to give him a call.

But life was busy, and resources few. I didn't get my commercial for more than a decade after that.

I do miss warming up a caravan in Alaska, getting ready to greet the day. Collecting my passengers, taking them out to the plane, flying the S-turns to GST, or strafing the Johns Hopkins with a load of touristas.

I miss getting up on a frosty morning to go work on my sportsman sequence, with my little aresti printout on my kneeboard.

I absolutely love the 175, but as much of an amazing airplane as it is, it's not the end of my flying ambitions.

I just hope it's not the end of the road.
 
Maurus said:
Over time that equates to a bigger number that can easily be the difference of getting furloughed or not. An upgrade or not. Etc etc.

AA is a 2200 pilot difference in ten years which puts you more than 10% higher in seniority. That is huge.

Obviously there are a ton of factors but I do see this being one of many for people getting to the legacy level.
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But what that seniority buys you can be very different. If the increase only buys you a slightly better line on a narrowbody position because the company doesnt have many widebodies, it may not be that big of a difference.
 
Kingairer said:
But what that seniority buys you can be very different. If the increase only buys you a slightly better line on a narrowbody position because the company doesnt have many widebodies, it may not be that big of a difference.
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Of course. Depends on your goals as a pilot. I'm just saying that more people may start using Delta as a resume builder soon to get to their desired destination as the music starts to slow down here in the next 6 months or so.
 
Maurus said:
Of course. Depends on your goals as a pilot. I'm just saying that more people may start using Delta as a resume builder soon to get to their desired destination as the music starts to slow down here in the next 6 months or so.
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Don’t let Delta hear you call them a mere, lowly, “resume builder airline”. You may as well have just called them Mesa Airlines. 😂

“We are a destination, not a stopover”
 
I started at a red and white airline with Airbus 319/320s.


Red and white is all gone. The Airbus 319/320/321s are gone. Now on a 737 - which was never in the picture to begin with. It was supposed to be a domestic carrier. Now it looks like we'll be international. Could retire as a widebody CA in all likeliness.

Who would have thought? It's just like an AWA pilot. Became US Airways, became American. That A320 FO at AWA could retire a B787 CA.


Now it makes me a hypocrite, because I would have left my shop for one of the big 3 in 2016-2019 in order to stay in a NYC base, but I realize how silly that sounds now. Giving up seniority in a seniority-based industry to start over at the bottom to chase the greener stuff just sounds......... unwise.


< 1 yr on a property? Sure, no big loss. 5th+ yr? Yikes.
 
Don't worry. I was at Tailhook this fall, waiting in line to get a drink, and was chatting with an E-2 NFO I knew from my last deployment. He asks what I'm doing now, and I tell him. He's like "oh cool, you just there to build some time?" :D

No mother F**** I'm not here to "build time". It's the only place I applied to, and it involved a 3-4 year courtship all said and done, beginning a few years before I left active duty (I wasn't actually upset BTW). But alas, even in spite of his east coast non-pilot ignorance, we are definitely being used as a time or resume building place for some. Which is just reality at the moment. Plenty of folks using their 2nd or 3rd choice Big 3 as a holding pen until they get a class date at their #1. I don't think any employer is unaware of this.
 
///AMG said:
Don't worry. I was at Tailhook this fall, waiting in line to get a drink, and was chatting with an E-2 NFO I knew from my last deployment. He asks what I'm doing now, and I tell him. He's like "oh cool, you just there to build some time?" :D

No mother F**** I'm not here to "build time". It's the only place I applied to, and it involved a 3-4 year courtship all said and done, beginning a few years before I left active duty (I wasn't actually upset BTW). But alas, even in spite of his east coast non-pilot ignorance, we are definitely being used as a time or resume building place for some. Which is just reality at the moment. Plenty of folks using their 2nd or 3rd choice Big 3 as a holding pen until they get a class date at their #1. I don't think any employer is unaware of this.
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Girl, same. Except for, you know, the tailhook stuff.

Union put out a profile of someone who left for Atlanta and I get what they were doing, saying hey the company is losing great talent over their feet dragging ways... but they could have picked a better example because you read this profile and its very clear that this guy was never once going to even consider staying here, he just wanted out of Utah.
 
///AMG said:
Don't worry. I was at Tailhook this fall, waiting in line to get a drink, and was chatting with an E-2 NFO I knew from my last deployment. He asks what I'm doing now, and I tell him. He's like "oh cool, you just there to build some time?" :D

No mother F**** I'm not here to "build time". It's the only place I applied to, and it involved a 3-4 year courtship all said and done, beginning a few years before I left active duty (I wasn't actually upset BTW). But alas, even in spite of his east coast non-pilot ignorance, we are definitely being used as a time or resume building place for some. Which is just reality at the moment. Plenty of folks using their 2nd or 3rd choice Big 3 as a holding pen until they get a class date at their #1. I don't think any employer is unaware of this.
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Flew with an LAX CA on reserve once when I was on the Bus that was flabbergasted that I didn’t have my apps in at UAL. No heckin’ way, I don’t want to commute to California.
 
trafficinsight said:
Girl, same. Except for, you know, the tailhook stuff.

Union put out a profile of someone who left for Atlanta and I get what they were doing, saying hey the company is losing great talent over their feet dragging ways... but they could have picked a better example because you read this profile and its very clear that this guy was never once going to even consider staying here, he just wanted out of Utah.
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Hah, now I’m kind of curious what that profile looks like…
 
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