The REAL value to jumping to a regional?

MikeD said:
Unfortunately, that becomes the "we do it because we've always done it this way", argument they use; regardless of if its truly best practice or not. Which is too bad, because there are likely some very good AMF people out there (or similar company/operation/experience) who would excel, and probably a good number of mil guys who have gotten on who haven't excelled.
Click to expand...
Generally, they have a known quantity from the military, as far as the personality goes. I'm sure the types of people they get from freight vary quite a bit.

I would love to go to a major, but realize it probably isn't in the cards for me, unless I make some huge sacrifices, which I'm not really willing to do at the moment.

I don't mind a double standard, because said fighter pilots gave 10+ years to the country. They deserve some perks.
 
BobDDuck said:
Well sure, but going back to the beginning of airline hiring in the 1920s, how big a pool of Military guys has there been and how big a pool of AMF guys has there been? It's a form of nepotism and bigger families always do better in that sort of environment.
Click to expand...
For AMF, there's only 160-200 guys in the roster at any given time. Only about 20-30 of them have a competitive quantity of flight time. The rest have 2000 hours or less I'd say. 10-20 will stay here for 20 years or more because of a nice schedule or other personal reasons. That leaves 5-10 at any given time that have the quantity of time and are looking for jobs. Not a big group at all.

The frustrating part isn't guys not getting hired, it's the not even getting a chance to sell the experience.
 
mojo6911 said:
Generally, they have a known quantity from the military, as far as the personality goes. I'm sure the types of people they get from freight vary quite a bit.

I would love to go to a major, but realize it probably isn't in the cards for me, unless I make some huge sacrifices, which I'm not really willing to do at the moment.

I don't mind a double standard, because said fighter pilots gave 10+ years to the country. They deserve some perks.
Click to expand...

The first part of your statement is correct, re "known quantity. The last part is bs, re "deserve some perks." Their perk was flying fighters.

This is from someone that flew fast movers and "gave?" 10+ yrs to the country before going to the airlines.
 
UAL747400 said:
For AMF, there's only 160-200 guys in the roster at any given time. Only about 20-30 of them have a competitive quantity of flight time. The rest have 2000 hours or less I'd say. 10-20 will stay here for 20 years or more because of a nice schedule or other personal reasons. That leaves 5-10 at any given time that have the quantity of time and are looking for jobs. Not a big group at all.

The frustrating part isn't guys not getting hired, it's the not even getting a chance to sell the experience.
Click to expand...

5-10 who are activley interviewing and will be out within a month. Got to keep that 40+% turnover rolling.
 
NickH said:
5-10 who are activley interviewing and will be out within a month. Got to keep that 40+% turnover rolling.
Click to expand...
I was more talking about the 5-10 with the flight time and are trying for LCCs and legacies. I'd say the majority of those are actually trying for corporate or charter though
 
Springer said:
The first part of your statement is correct, re "known quantity. The last part is bs, re "deserve some perks." Their perk was flying fighters.

This is from someone that flew fast movers and "gave?" 10+ yrs to the country before going to the airlines.
Click to expand...

Theat's where I'm coming from. The argument was, "needing 121 experience" in terms of flying/operations. A guy coming from civil cargo ops and in a similar aircraft has more relevant experience in that compared to a military guy who came from fighters, who has the square root of zero of that experience. By the same logic, even a C-9/C-141/C-32/C-40 guy doesn't specifically have "121 experience", even though they're doing the same exact job in some cases (and sometimes, in the exact same airplanes), just not under that portion of the CFRs. So the logic is a folly, really.

Truth is, people from all kinds of backgrounds can, and have, successfully gotten hired on with mainline airlines and trained/adapted just fine, with or without having had prior 121 time. It is merely a flight operation, a macro version of many other types of flight operations; it's not astronaut selection.
 
Interesting that this thread came up because I'm still new to the whole 121 world, and I'd like to know the answer to this, along with 'how much time at a regional is considered valuable?'.

I came to the regionals for a number of reasons, and one is to get the box checked in case a major is ever in my future, but if a good 91/135 operator called me tomorrow, I'd be gone. I'm not going to give up QOL and earning potential for the gamble that a major MIGHT call me if I spend a few years at a regional. I passed my 121 training, have spent a few months on line, would a major airline look down on someone if they left their regional for a better opportunity after only being on line for less than a year?

z987k said:
I'm not saying you treat them like a box. I went back and edited a bit to try and clarify that. I was just refuting his claim that 121 has more customer service than 135 pax.. well most 135 pax I would imagine. 135 has quite the range.
Click to expand...

Agreed. I spent the majority of my career in 91/135 before going 121, and I can say that there is no where near the amount of customer service in 121. 135/91 is built on customer service. 121 seems to be built on schedules, getting people from A to B, with customer service if there's time. If this wasn't the case, we wouldn't be hearing people complaining about having to fly all the time. Now that doesn't mean that I don't greet the pax with a smile when I'm hopping on or off the plane, but my job is focused on getting the plane out of the chocks, rather than going out back and asking the pax in 9D how his day is going, and if there's anything I can get for him.

Finally, I truly mean no disrespect to the military folks, but as far as military/fighter pilots goes, those that learned to fly in their respective branch don't have the experience many civilian pilots have when it comes to the customer service, and in some regards, CRM aspect of civilian flying. I do get tired of hearing "These guys gave X amount of years to their country and deserve a chance." I think it's extremely respectable that someone gave a decade or more of their lives to the service, but the people I know who fly in the Navy and Air Force weren't drafted and forced to fight. They chose to be military pilots because they always talked about wanting to fly jets off of boats, or big airplanes on someone else's dollar. Do I think they should be given a shot at flying for a major? Absolutely! Do I think they should reserve a spot in line ahead of those civilians who have worked extremely hard to get to where they are? Nope, sure don't.
 
Mark815 said:
Finally, I truly mean no disrespect to the military folks, but as far as military/fighter pilots goes, those that learned to fly in their respective branch don't have the experience many civilian pilots have when it comes to the customer service, and in some regards, CRM aspect of civilian flying. I do get tired of hearing "These guys gave X amount of years to their country and deserve a chance." I think it's extremely respectable that someone gave a decade or more of their lives to the service, but the people I know who fly in the Navy and Air Force weren't drafted and forced to fight. They chose to be military pilots because they always talked about wanting to fly jets off of boats, or big airplanes on someone else's dollar. Do I think they should be given a shot at flying for a major? Absolutely! Do I think they should reserve a spot in line ahead of those civilians who have worked extremely hard to get to where they are? Nope, sure don't.
Click to expand...

From the fighter world, guys who fly crew aircraft, generally don't seem to have an issue with CRM because they still have to work together as a crew. The difference between them and civil is, that in civil, you're dealing with two pilots who are focused on actually flying the plane; whereas in fighters, the two crew aren't both pilots, one is a pilot, and one is a non-pilot rated flight crewmember who, while backing up the pilot in plane flying duties, has his own separate things he has to focus on apart from the aircraft itself. But general CRM still applies in order to get the overall job done.

Now, single seat only guys? There is where I can see someone having issues in learning to divide up duties of flying their own plane. Sure, these guys can manage a formation well, and "CRM" the tactical duties just fine; but inside their own airplane, they're very used to doing everything themselves. Now, does this mean they can't learn good CRM? Of course not, that's where it comes down to the individual and how open minded he or she is. And I've seen in my time, people who fit both ends of the spectrum in my squadrons and others (rigid individualists, as well as hate-doing-single-seat types), as well as people who are a happy flexible medium.

And I agree, coming from military in and of itself isn't a free ticket and shouldn't be. While the tanker/transport guy is exceptionally experienced for 121 flying just due to the nature of their work and thus are very competitive for mainline 121 jobs due to ratings/hours/experience; the average (mil-background only) F-16 guy has less experience in anything remotely 121 related than nearly all mid-career civil guys working towards the airlines, and definitely not even any large amount of multi-engine time. :)
 
Last edited:
I actually like flying with single seat fighter guys, since I come from a single pilot 135 freight background. When we fly together, there is little of this touchy feely, verify stuff...... we just "get 'er done". You can tell me about it later.
 
UAL747400 said:
I was more talking about the 5-10 with the flight time and are trying for LCCs and legacies. I'd say the majority of those are actually trying for corporate or charter though
Click to expand...

I don't imagine AMF to a locust would be that hard right now. Corp or Charter seems to be the way people from AMF go. I think it's more of a choice thing than an ability to get hired.
 
unclassified said:
I actually like flying with single seat fighter guys, since I come from a single pilot 135 freight background. When we fly together, there is little of this touchy feely, verify stuff...... we just "get 'er done". You can tell me about it later.
Click to expand...

So long as the two crew are on the same page, how they do their CRM is up to them (barring a rule or OpSpec saying otherwise). A couple guys I used to fly with on our jets subscribed to the "everything on this half of the panel I'll work, everything on your half of the panel, you work. Just keep informed". Cool, works fine. Merely because it's briefed and known. It's just one style that happens to work for a smaller jet like that. In other ops or with other people, it may or may not work, as its non-standard.
 
Their is one guy I fly with a lot is a recently retired ANG F-16 SQ CC. We've flow together so often that we pretty much know what each other is going to do or want before they say it. We bid and fly the same trip to the same two airports, so we can cut out the extraneous chatter that would be taking place if we were flying with someone that we are not as familiar with.
 
I'm taking the regional route. I'm a separating mil heavy IP with just over 2k (after subtracting 'other'). 860 TPIC, 1019 PIC....I start at Compass next week and I figured it would be better to do that than just wait around for a major to call since i'm such a low time guy.
 
ian said:
I'm taking the regional route. I'm a separating mil heavy IP with just over 2k (after subtracting 'other'). 860 TPIC, 1019 PIC....I start at Compass next week and I figured it would be better to do that than just wait around for a major to call since i'm such a low time guy.
Click to expand...

Don't short yourself by not having an application in with all the majors especially with your C-5 time.. I read something the other day that a Delta pilot at indoc was told that they would be hiring 8,000 over the next 15 years. Add that to what the other majors will need and after they take the cream off the top, there will be something for everyone for years to come..
 
Springer said:
Don't short yourself by not having an application in with all the majors especially with your C-5 time.. I read something the other day that a Delta pilot at indoc was told that they would be hiring 8,000 over the next 15 years. Add that to what the other majors will need and after they take the cream off the top, there will be something for everyone for years to come..
Click to expand...
oh they are definitely in....just figure it will be a ~year (hopefully less) before I get a call.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top