I was hired in 1998 by Mesaba. I had 1282 hours total and 204 multi. I already worked for Mesaba as a ramp agent and had been flight instructing part time for 3 years. I also had a master's degree. I had about 40 pilots in my indoc class and my experience was pretty typical for what new hires had. Maybe three or four pilots had a little less time than me. NOBODY was fresh out of a pilot mill. Every pilot there had been flight instructing or flying cargo for at least a couple years. Although not a lot of guys had bothered getting their ATP yet, everyone had at least passed the ATP written exam and either had 1500 hours or were very close like me. I glady would have flight instructed 3 more months and got the ATP if it would have helped increase pay and QOL.
I left Mesaba in 2004. My story was kind of like that NY Times guy, only I had almost no debt. Still sucked, though. I feel for the guy. I went to college from 2004-2008 and got another master's in something else that the recession crushed as well.
I kept up on my flying while out of the airlines (just barely). In the Spring of 2008 I was hired by Eagle with 4787 total, and 3493 in the Saab. I had a Saab type and had been in the left seat for a couple years. There was about 20 new hires in my indoc. Only one guy had more experience than me. The average person had about 300-400 hours. A lot were fresh out of an aviation college. One guy had 220 hours total! Not to knock Eagle. Their training was good and they actually paid for a lot of these super low time people to go to extra sim training before they came to indoc. I guess for a brief period it was possible to get hired with a couple hundred hours. Some of these pilots definately struggled in the sim, however, from the rumors I heard.
Anyway, from '98 to '08 there was a huge difference in the type of experiences my class mates had. Frankly I was a little shocked. That's not to say I think the raw quality of the people changed. These young guns of '08 fresh out of av schools were smart and studied hard. A few seemed to have maturity and skills beyond what their flight hours might suggest. I'm sure most are fine line pilots now. But, speaking over-all in general terms, I think the class of '98 just had more real world experience. You just can't buy the type of experience that flying night cago, IFR, through Great Lakes winters, in some junker airplane with no auto-pilot provides. I guess you could call it survival skills.
I was hired in 1998 by Mesaba. I had 1282 hours total and 204 multi. I already worked for Mesaba as a ramp agent and had been flight instructing part time for 3 years. I also had a master's degree. I had about 40 pilots in my indoc class and my experience was pretty typical for what new hires had. Maybe three or four pilots had a little less time than me. NOBODY was fresh out of a pilot mill. Every pilot there had been flight instructing or flying cargo for at least a couple years. Although not a lot of guys had bothered getting their ATP yet, everyone had at least passed the ATP written exam and either had 1500 hours or were very close like me. I glady would have flight instructed 3 more months and got the ATP if it would have helped increase pay and QOL.
I left Mesaba in 2004. My story was kind of like that NY Times guy, only I had almost no debt. Still sucked, though. I feel for the guy. I went to college from 2004-2008 and got another master's in something else that the recession crushed as well.
I kept up on my flying while out of the airlines (just barely). In the Spring of 2008 I was hired by Eagle with 4787 total, and 3493 in the Saab. I had a Saab type and had been in the left seat for a couple years. There was about 20 new hires in my indoc. Only one guy had more experience than me. The average person had about 300-400 hours. A lot were fresh out of an aviation college. One guy had 220 hours total! Not to knock Eagle. Their training was good and they actually paid for a lot of these super low time people to go to extra sim training before they came to indoc. I guess for a brief period it was possible to get hired with a couple hundred hours. Some of these pilots definately struggled in the sim, however, from the rumors I heard.
Anyway, from '98 to '08 there was a huge difference in the type of experiences my class mates had. Frankly I was a little shocked. That's not to say I think the raw quality of the people changed. These young guns of '08 fresh out of av schools were smart and studied hard. A few seemed to have maturity and skills beyond what their flight hours might suggest. I'm sure most are fine line pilots now. But, speaking over-all in general terms, I think the class of '98 just had more real world experience. You just can't buy the type of experience that flying night cago, IFR, through Great Lakes winters, in some junker airplane with no auto-pilot provides. I guess you could call it survival skills.
First 121 job was on DC-8's as an F/O I had over 4,000 hours a good bit of turbine PIC 1,000 plus hours and a good bit of heavy round motor recip PIC. Night freight, corporate, bush ,fire fighting and instructing in between flying sky divers and some Grand Canyon tour flying was my background at the time. I've never worked for a regional. I applied at Mesa in about 1989 or so with 2,000 + hours and they sent me a post card which informed me that I wasn't qualified please reapply at a later date.
I just read that NY Times guy's explaination of the article on him on a different thread. I guess he was pretty much debt free as well, so I take back the suggestion that he wasn't.
Pilots were hired into ab-intio training back in the 60’s and UAL was advertising in the newspaper for pilots back then,
Just anectdotal evidence, but I've always heard that a majority of those that were hired by UAL, TWA, and Eastern under that type of program did not fare too well in training or on the line.
What does it matter if you have more total time than most captains you fly with?Maybe you guys are too cool to fly the saab?Do you have the pic rating in the saab I would guess not because if you did then you would not be running your mouth.I agree that one of the only ways to get the public to think better of the regionals is to make it more competitive.That my friends is only a a knee jerk reaction by raising it to 1500 hours.Colgan really botched it,bad deal very sad.These new duty periods are going to make a huge demand for pilots we were told 10 to 20 percent more pilots needed for current flying.Then old guys retiring?Where are you going to get 1500 hour qualified guys?
Calm down. I just thought it wasn an interesting fact to be included in the thread. I am definately not "too cool" for the saab, in fact i requested it over the jet, but that was because I came from a single pilot freight operation and I thought that the saab would be best suited to fit my previous experience.
As to where you'll find qualified guys, I'm sure there are plenty of freight, corporate, etc. pilots willing to fly for an airline if the pay, bennies, and QOL were at a much higher level than they are now.
the real question is how much and when, the numbers will be skewed and not represent the direction of hiring. The direction is of late, they were hiring lower and lower time pilots, eagle was even paying to send applicants to do sim training so they'd have a better chance of passing training.
True but it'd be and up and down graph. There have been several hiring booms through the years. This past couple years wasn't the first and won't be the last. I've read articles about guys hired at mainline when 18yrs old. I shared a van with an AMR capt that was hired on around 20yrs old. I don't know how few those are but I seem to run into them from time to time.
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