Originally Posted by
inline five
No, it was not easy to get a job back in the early 2000's.
I graduated in 2003, pretty much no one was hiring, even flight schools.
I was lucky to land a CFI gig after moving 1000 miles. The chief flight instructor had a class date at ExpressJet on 9/11/01. Needless to say, he was still instructing/flying charter years later.
New hires back then were basically like they were now - lots had 135 experience, heck even Republic/Chautauqua wouldn't even look at you unless you had night freight time. I applied there multiple times with folks walking my resume in and no dice. Everyone I know hired there was either former Airnet, Ram Air, Ameriflight, or Flight Express.
Now, late 2004 to 2008, yes it was easy to get a job. Lots of scope relief from the legacies meant lots of new jets coming on property. Pretty much the glory years. 2008 financial crisis and age 65 but a big fat stop to that.
No not easy at all! You had to have 1500+, several hundred ME, and internal references.
The training was harder, but not in a good way...often you had to memorize vast amounts of trivial knowledge which was utterly irrelevant to actually flying the plane (I can still tell you how many ounces of water the galley sink water tank on a CRJ-200 contains
).
Checkrides included NDB approaches, which you hoped to God you never had to do in a turbojet without GPS or RNAV, and were PC format instead of AQP LOFT scenario. Wash rate was at least 10%, up to as much as 50% in some programs.
Training is much better today, and has gotten easier (in a good way) by making it more line-oriented and eliminating superfluous BS...that mainly served to make training dept. loosers feel good about themselves at your expense.