The Future of JC

derg said:
It’s been 25 years.

What do you guys want to see?

Initially, the plan wasn’t to run a website for this long because there’s this big beautiful outside world and it was just started with an online resume, some boredom and an English kid that kept writing me questions when it got features in USAir’s inflight magazine one day.

We have a vibrant offline community, which is fantastic, however, as we’re looking at our third decade, antecedent to the social media revolution I’m not sure if constantly repeating “help each other, be better to each other” is exactly a future-forward game plan.

So…. What are your ideas? Serious question.
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I joined days after 9/11 as a brown guy of a particular religion who wondered if he had any chance in hell of getting hired at an airline.

Your main jetcareers page was instrumental. The original one, with pilot schedules, testimonies, perspectives, bidding, lifestyle, major, regional, duty limits, medical, etc etc.


That main page is dead, jetcareers.com routes to only the forum. I hope to see it how it used to be, with the original informative JC page. There was so much knowledge on that website, it was something to see.

It was instrumental in my education about this career. You changed it for me, imagine how many others you changed it for. Let’s bring that page back. And add the appropriate changes, eg, like how you commented it’s harder to go from 250 to 1500 than it is to get hired at a major (I agree). So people are exposed to that, have a heads up, etc.


And you’re young. But before the golden years, I hope you find the right people / group to pass the torch on to so it still lives.
 
I'm not sure where it should go but i am 100% sure that every specialty forum should not be hosted on Reddit. Like the API blackout last year and threat to make some subreddits "paid or subscription" based. We cannot depend on one website for all of our needs. I'm very grateful for this all the varieties of specialty forums that I use that are NOT Reddit.
 
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Cherokee_Cruiser said:
I joined days after 9/11 as a brown guy of a particular religion who wondered if he had any chance in hell of getting hired at an airline.

Your main jetcareers page was instrumental. The original one, with pilot schedules, testimonies, perspectives, bidding, lifestyle, major, regional, duty limits, medical, etc etc.


That main page is dead, jetcareers.com routes to only the forum. I hope to see it how it used to be, with the original informative JC page. There was so much knowledge on that website, it was something to see.

It was instrumental in my education about this career. You changed it for me, imagine how many others you changed it for. Let’s bring that page back. And add the appropriate changes, eg, like how you commented it’s harder to go from 250 to 1500 than it is to get hired at a major (I agree). So people are exposed to that, have a heads up, etc.
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The ladders from the early to late 2000s here have all been pulled up. Everyone has gotten theirs. Hence, the Lav and General Topics, are the really only active forrum sections, in that order. A little lesser the airline forum and then the dispatcher section.

The days of good ole, solid PFT/PFJ arguments, are long gone. Stuff is mostly a pipeline mill in aviation now.
 
MikeD said:
The ladders from the early to late 2000s here have all been pulled up. Everyone has gotten theirs. Hence, the Lav and General Topics, are the really only active forrum sections, in that order. A little lesser the airline forum and then the dispatcher section.

The days of good ole, solid PFT/PFJ arguments, are long gone. Stuff is mostly a pipeline mill in aviation now.
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I certainly feel that way. Didn’t know if it’s just a personal feeling because I feel like the group has moved along with at the same pace as me. Maybe that just a feeling similar to “everyone is the same age as me” and then you realize the guy your flying with graduated college 10 years after you. I just don’t see people having a difficult time getting hired anymore so the “how” isn’t getting asked as much. “Kids today” have lots of YouTuber type influencers who have the “day in the life” things covered even if it’s highly curated. When I was new, I looked up to airline pilots of all types, and major airline pilots were like mythical figures to me. Now that I am one, I’ve never run across anyone who is thirsty for information about how to get on the career path.

I don’t say all that to mean I don’t see value here. I enjoy the forum. I don’t visit any other sites so it’s the only opportunity to see what other airlines are doing. It’s more of a hang out for professionals rather than no entrants. I don’t visit the lav, ever.

“Those guys are pseudo scabs!” “Whipsaw”
“Race to the bottom!” :)
 
Kingairer said:
I certainly feel that way. Didn’t know if it’s just a personal feeling because I feel like the group has moved along with at the same pace as me. Maybe that just a feeling similar to “everyone is the same age as me” and then you realize the guy your flying with graduated college 10 years after you. I just don’t see people having a difficult time getting hired anymore so the “how” isn’t getting asked as much. “Kids today” have lots of YouTuber type influencers who have the “day in the life” things covered even if it’s highly curated. When I was new, I looked up to airline pilots of all types, and major airline pilots were like mythical figures to me. Now that I am one, I’ve never run across anyone who is thirsty for information about how to get on the career path.

I don’t say all that to mean I don’t see value here. I enjoy the forum. I don’t visit any other sites so it’s the only opportunity to see what other airlines are doing. It’s more of a hang out for professionals rather than no entrants. I don’t visit the lav, ever.

“Those guys are pseudo scabs!” “Whipsaw”
“Race to the bottom!” :)
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As much as we hate to admit it, atleast in the US… very few youngsters feel the way we did about Aviation anymore. It’s just an annoyance for most that are wired for instant dopamine hits and gratification.

A higher percentage of people are joining because some influencer said you could make a mil a year with some overtime, or something to do with the potential career earnings. Not many are joining because they just can’t stop thinking about airplanes, touched by that bug that got most of us.

World wide being a pilot still seems to top the list according to interwebz data, but it’s pretty much not an ideal job to many raised in American society. All my opinion of course.


For me, this website led to a lot of conversations providing me tools to move along in the career. Every job I got, I had found someone on JC to pick their brain beforehand. I try to pay it forward, but as others have said those same questions aren’t asked much anymore.
 
The AMF-UPS deal is sweet.

However, I think some got too wrapped up in “I’ve got to get to DL/AA/US as fast as possible so I can take a selfie and grow my followers” without realizing there’s more to aviation than self promotion.

I literally had an FO say “I was at (freight carrier) but I need to be seen” — I really didn’t know what to do with that.
 
derg said:
The AMF-UPS deal is sweet.

However, I think some got too wrapped up in “I’ve got to get to DL/AA/US as fast as possible so I can take a selfie and grow my followers” without realizing there’s more to aviation than self promotion.

I literally had an FO say “I was at (freight carrier) but I need to be seen” — I really didn’t know what to do with that.
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Have you been Go-Pro’ed yet?


“Um, why you putting a camera on the windshield?”
 
Soku39 said:
I'm not sure where it should go but i am 100% sure that every specialty forum should not be hosted on Reddit. Like the API blackout last year and threat to make some subreddits "paid or subscription" based. We cannot depend on one website for all of our needs. I'm very grateful for this all the varieties of specialty forums that I use that are NOT Reddit.
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There are a bunch of things wrong with /r/flying, aside from being hosted on Reddit. But I agree. These little quiet and deliberately disconnected niches of the internet are quite wonderful overall.
 
is it just a sign of the times that there’s not much low time interest in the forum? if people want to know how the career works they’ll find an aforementioned subreddit on a site they already use, or follow some social media con artist for clips of how things work.

things have also been quite good for a number of years industrywide- the stagnation of the post-9/11 post-GFC glut has cleared and things are mostly pretty linear in a career track, outside of low time jobs in the post covid era. I think when times were good things just sort of quieted down, and those users that made real or internet friends here stuck around for the social discussions.

a new userbase could be good but that’s hard to cultivate eyeballs and I can’t imagine running this site is anything beyond a money losing prospect. I could slap a big JC.com vinyl on the side of the race plane @derg, cheaper than paying for banner ads on other sites 😁
 
Congrats!! Your website is now old enough to rent a car And its insurance rate should drop off a cliff!

Coming up through the ranks, one of my favorite features of the site was the "day in the life" type features. I realize that many people don't want to know the public where they work, and might be hesitant to doxx themselves or cross their employers social media policies. But I loved those posts. I think it would also be cool to get "days in the lives" from aviation pros other than just airline pilots. We have dispatchers, mechanics, an ARFF expert, medevac pilots, ATCers, up and comers captaining grand canyon tours, professional CFIs, and union types. There's lots of potential material.

Also, with the way the internet has evolved, maybe a wiki or FAQ for how to get from 0-1500.

Also. I guess I've been on this website for half my life. Yikes. Awesome, though.
 
bimmerphile said:
is it just a sign of the times that there’s not much low time interest in the forum? if people want to know how the career works they’ll find an aforementioned subreddit on a site they already use, or follow some social media con artist for clips of how things work.

things have also been quite good for a number of years industrywide- the stagnation of the post-9/11 post-GFC glut has cleared and things are mostly pretty linear in a career track, outside of low time jobs in the post covid era. I think when times were good things just sort of quieted down, and those users that made real or internet friends here stuck around for the social discussions.

a new userbase could be good but that’s hard to cultivate eyeballs and I can’t imagine running this site is anything beyond a money losing prospect. I could slap a big JC.com vinyl on the side of the race plane @derg, cheaper than paying for banner ads on other sites 😁
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I don't think Derg is doing this for money
 
The future can be whatever people want it to be, but
derg said:
“help each other, be better to each other”
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will largely continue to fall mostly on deaf ears in a world where everyone is atomized and individualized into oblivion.

Everyone is the star of their own movies now, and Americans only read 12 books a year. JC is great, but our collective attention span is basically non-existent anymore so reading a long-form post by @MikeD about some accident 20 years ago, or a deep-dive into aerodynamics by @inigo88 is not in America's collective wheelhouse. Hell, kids are going to college and are not able to read books in a literature class.

Also, most people are doom-pilled screaming people presently. Binary thinkers abound these days, things are either "the BEST!!! OMG WITH RED SAUCE!" or "THE WORST AND ONLY GOING TO BE THE LITERAL APOCALYPSE" because of how we reward people socially on the internet. If you are the optimist and you get it right, nobody cares because things are good, conversely if you get it wrong people think you are a moron. Similarly, if you are a pessimist and you get it wrong nobody cares because "whatever things are fine" but if you get it right you look like a genius that predicted catastrophe. That means that increasingly harsh, critical takes, and predictions will proliferate. We're incentivizing the wrong behavior.

As for what JC should do, in my opinion the information on here should be curated and archived for future generations of pilots, but beyond that, since most of the major players on this site don't really need anything from each other anymore (which was always the underlying motivation for many on here - networking), this should be a nexus to perform charitable giving and help others. Regardless of our beliefs, we should band together to help other people with the power of this platform and the power of y'all's collective pocketbooks. This should turn into a place that shows how aviation can be magnanimous rather than miserly and miserable.

In the mean time, I still browse the forum and I'd like it to remain. I don't show up nearly as much as I used to, but I'd love to periodically reminisce about my glory days while trying to educate people on some of the stuff I do now applied to aviation. That'd be awesome, and it'd help me grow. Nevertheless, that takes discussion, that takes people who are interested, that takes precious time that I seem to have less and less of.
 
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SteveC said:
I’m just here for the free beer and cookies now.

2 years retired, so my well of knowledge on many pertinent topics is getting pretty outdated. Just hanging out now ‘cause I haven’t been kicked to the curb yet, and it’s more fun than folding laundry.



@derg, is there a way to re-focus the website’s purpose just a wee bit? Maybe hatchet job a lot of the existing forums and purposefully focus on mentoring and further developing people within this group, mainly pilots but dispatchers, mechanics, etc., as well. Many/most here are now well established and the problems of not knowing how to proceed in aviation have been solved by most, and it’s a time when complacency can settle in. At this stage people are competent in what they do, but there is always more to learn, but there’s not always incentive to do so. I know that you, and others here, do a lot of stuff in your jobs besides just flying airplanes, and while much of it is presumably proprietary to each company, maybe a way to enable those tools and insights on a peer-to-peer basis might inject some fresh purpose here?
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I was going to suggest something very similar to this. Change the focus from helping people get into the profession to helping people who are already in the profession develop themselves further. Honestly, though, I am not sure people would participate… There’s not a lot of recognition of expertise among the users. And I think people like line check airmen, union reps, training pilots, recruiters, etc. would be reluctant to share their issues for learning purposes.

And @MikeD, I don’t think any ladders have been pulled up per se… I don’t think at all that anybody is reluctant to help people into the profession. We simply don’t get a lot of traffic from people interested in getting into the profession. As others have said, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram and even reddit are the avenues of information for new people. I brought a new PPL here recently and he lasted all of two posts.

This site, which used to serve the purpose of helping new people get into the profession, is now for aviation professionals who want to BS about aviation and other stuff. And that’s OK if @derg wants to pay the server bills for it. I am not entirely sure the site can be rebranded for another purpose, though.

Another alternative is to hold a blowout network JC event next year which culminates in pulling the plug on this website forever.
 
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