Originally Posted by
Skyvector
I wish you the best of luck, but you are acting like you just discovered oil on the surface of the moon.
You are not charting unknown waters here. Everybody networks. Everybody attends job fairs. Everybody waits 3 hours in line for a 5 minute handshake with a mainline recruiter. Everybody collects stacks of recommendation letters. None of this is new, and none of it gets you any closer to a mainline job. Sure, it beats doing nothing. But it's akin to spinning your car's wheels in the mud.
The only way to truly increase your chances is if you are part of the friends and family plan. Assuming you don't have any military flight time. Other than that, you are just one out of thousands. And those other thousands are also networking and getting their face out there.
Too many of us think we are doing something nobody else is doing. That is a residual effect of our jobs. We sit in the cockpit with either a Captain or an FO but never work directly with another person who is our direct peer. So you fly around thunderstorms perfectly, make smooth landings, great radio calls, etc....and after a while you begin to get it in your head you are the best at what you do and nobody else can do it as well. You don't have another FO sitting next to you doing the same job for you to compare with. Or another Captain if that is your position.
That spills over into other areas of life. So you network and do a bunch legwork to get that mainline interview. You begin to think you are the only one doing it. You get your letters together and polish your resume and think nobody is doing it as well as you are.
Most pilots will spend years trying their best to get out of the Regionals...PIC or no PIC. An eventual job with an LCC like Frontier will be more likely to happen than United or Delta. And even then that will take a good 5 years of Regional flying to materialize. Some may get lucky, sure. Happens all the time. That doesn't mean that we should all count on a large heaping of luck to move on. If you have the opportunity to work for an airline that has a true flow, and that flow is WORKING as advertised or better....that would be a better choice than going to work for an independent Regional with no flow and rolling the dice.
Exactly. Many CA's here at Eagle have been doing all the networking and job fairs to get the hell out of here for YEARS. Including myself. Exceed all the quals, perfect records, piles of internal recommendations, years of volunteer work, extensive work history, high GPA's, connections in management positions, TPIC and so on..
The only people "regularly" getting out are going lateral, taking way lower career earning corporate pilot jobs, going to crap places like Allegiant or Frontier.. Which Frontier would take 7+ yrs just to get back to current eagle CA pay.. Some to JB and Spirit, and a few to Cargo. While some of those can certainly be a step up from here, for FO's especially.. They are not Legacy jobs and many wouldn't want to spend a career there so another jump years later is still probably going to have to happen. So get back in line to start over 1st year again if you are lucky enough to finally get hired.
The people going to actual Legacy carriers this year from Eagle outside of the flow are probably less than 30 or so. Of well over 1000+ trying, and 500 or so trying very hard. Doing everything possible with many connections.
Not sure where people get this idea that it will be so easy with the magic TPIC.. Spirit or JB maybe.. But many CA's can't even get called from there either, even with attending job fairs and internal recs. UAL, DAL, AA, Hawaiian, AK, Umm No. Those are about a 1 in 50 shot with people just like you right now. I could name most of the pilots here that have gone to UAL, DAL and AK this year and I know hundreds of pilots here very well.. Those names of people getting Legacy jobs get around quickly via word of mouth and Facebook etc.. Most that got those jobs were also working in CP office briefly, check airman or in management positions too. Regular line pilots are very few.. FO's are even fewer.