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Old 05-26-2013, 04:00 AM
  #4  
ZapBrannigan
Furloughed Again?!
 
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Joined APC: Aug 2007
Position: Boeing 737
Posts: 4,781
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I don't know the importance of having it to get on, but I can tell you first hand the challenge of not having it...

In 1998 I was a copilot for Chautauqua on the Jetstream. A lot of my colleagues were going to work for a little airline in Florida called AirTran. I had never heard of them, but they just merged with Valujet and were hiring so I sent a résumé. In June of that year I was hired as a DC9 copilot. By October I was furloughed. I was fortunate to be re-hired by CHQ at the bottom of the list (naturally).

In October of 99, still with zero PICT I was hired by USAir. In march of 02 I was furloughed again (along with 1149 others from my airline alone)

Very few airlines were hiring in the wake of 9/11 so competitive qualifications were extremely high. While a lot of my friends were being picked up by Vanguard, Eastwind, ATA, or even Southwest... I was forced to get a job flying copilot on a Dornier prop for PSA.

In Nov 02 PSA said they would have to Furlough, so before that happened I quit and went to Comair.

Now I had been flying as an airline pilot for 8 years and was still bottom guy on the list at a commuter.

In 2004 I took a job with a corporate flight department and finally upgraded in 2007. I had over 8000 hours before I logged my first hour of PIC turbine.

That's a whole lot of lost revenue over the years compared with others in my peer set who DID have the PICT.

Now I could have gone back to USAir and be set for life right now... But in 07 it didn't make sense to do that. They were still in bankruptcy and it didn't look as though they would survive. Made the best decision I could based on the info I had at the time. Unfortunately it was the wrong one.

I wish you luck with your decision. Hopefully it works out better than mine has.
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