Bhounddog

I'm a 36 year old with no flying experience considering a career change. I started another thread with full details (feel free to share your feedback and advice).

What other viable career paths to the majors exist (other than regionals)?

The reason I ask is it appears FO jobs at regionals pay ~$40K per year for the first few years. Whereas, FO jobs a NetJets (for example) pay ~$60K per year for the first few years, which would be much better for our household cash flow.

Are there major drawbacks to working a corporate/fractional job over a regional? Are there any other career paths to majors that have a higher starting pay and possibly better QOL than a regional FO job?

usmc-sgt

The problem with Netjets is that they are not really a stepping stone. Unless something has changed, they wont be interested in you unless you have a few thousand hours as well as turbine experience. While you could certainly leave netjets for a major/legacy, youd have to get there first. Even then, while they are certainly competitive, small to mid size cabin business jet time doesn't put you necessarily any higher on the competitive list than an RJ captain.

Youd still need to solve the problem of getting competitive for Netjets which would be accruing the necessary experience. While 60K does sound a lot more palatable than 35K, those types of jobs don't come without putting your hours in. For a low time pilot the regionals are typically a necessary evil as well as a means to an end. If you want to get to the majors in any sort of a hurry there is likely no faster route.

rickair7777

What he said. Any pilot job which pays more than $30-50K is going to be either very competitive or a dead-end for an airline career. If CFI's could get hired at fractionals, they wouldn't bother flocking to the regionals (or the regionals would have to pay better).

Now it is possible for a regional FO to get hired at a fractional , but that's probably more of a diagonal move if you're airline bound. You would take longer to upgrade and build TPIC than just staying at the regional.

Also majors still probably have a slight preference for regional over corporate pilots (all else being equal) simply because they've demonstrated an ability to function in 121 and they know what they're getting into. Corporate pilots have some different cultural attitudes than 121 (that cuts both ways of course).

If you made a lateral move to fractionals, a major might wonder why you didn't like 121 enough to stick around and upgrade.

Bucknut

NetJets is higly competitive!! They hire retired Airline Pilots with a bunch of experience. I am typed in one of their airplanes with a 1000 hrs of 121 pic and was a contract check airman with them and did not even get a reply!!! NO violations, DUI, Speeding tickets etc..

Bhounddog

Thank you all for the insightful replies.

Are there any other pilot career paths (besides majors via regionals) that have a good QOL, pay well, and take less than 10 years to get to? Or, is the majors via the regionals the best path if I want to eventually achieve QOL and a $100K+ income?

atpcliff

UAL has a deal with Lufthansa. LH has a cadet training center in AZ. You get your CFI, apply with LH, fly for them as a CFI until you get your ATP/1500 hours, then go directly to UAL in a narrowbody...

Otterbox

Is your goal to be at a major airline for as long as possible before you retire? Get your 1500hrs and go to an AA wholly owned regional... use the flow as your backup plan while you apply to your career destination.

waflyboy

This is almost rich enough to get me back into flight instructing. Almost.

iFlyRC

Everyone I know that tries to avoid the regionals ends up having a much harder time with career progression. For myself, going to a regional and getting a fast upgrade and quickly attaining 1100+ tpic was the equivelent of a time warp.

Hotspot

This is probably the best advice that I have ever seen concerning this topic. I say that because that's exactly the answer that I was looking for for questions I was thinking of asking.