Paying for an interview? I first saw that in 1993 when Business Express called me out of the blue one day and said they had seen my resume and would like to invite me in for an interview. Ok, my airline had just closed down after 60 years so I said great. They gave me all the details and then at the end asked me how I wanted to pay. Pay for what I asked? The interview. I was not going to pay $300 for an interview with a company that pays $14000 a year. How much respect for me would a company have for someone willing to pay for an interview. How much respect would I have for myself I thought?

Then I got a call from Carnival Airlines. They wanted me to pay something like $6000, maybe it was more, to go through their training. They would give me a 25 hour IOE afterwards and afterwards an interview. No guarantee I would be hired. No guarantee they would be hiring. I would be flying their passengers around for free. I passed on that.

Then there was Kiwi Airlines, started by some X Eastern pilots in 1992. Pilots running their own airline. For 25000 you could be hired as an FO of FE and for 50000 as a captain.

Back then the market was very bad for pilots. Pan Am had just gone under, Eastern had just gone under, Midway had closed. Every big airline had furloughed. Very very bad.

They all went out of business except Business express which became part of eagle.

When Saudiair had a fire, landed and everyone died from the smoke, the FE was an American who had paid for his own training. The investigators and the media made a hugh deal out of the fact that he paid for his own training. They concluded that he must have been incompetent to have to do that. Are people going to make the same conclusion about people paying to get an interview in a market where there are lots of opportunities for pilots? What if it gets publicized that you get a job at Frontier or Spirit by paying them money rather than qualifications. Even if it is not the whole story, might someone end up on a list of pilots that airlines avoid because they don't want to be know has hiring a pilot who was so bad he had to bribe someone to give him a job.

I knew one guy who went to Kiwi and people joked about him quite a bit for buying himself a job. I'm not sure if he is still in aviation. He had a well practiced explanation, but it did not seem to overcome people's view of what and why he paid 25k for a job. I guess you were given stock in the company.

That was when things were really bad for pilots. Now there are few pilots. Should the days of paying for an interview be over? I see that Frontier tickets are still available and Frontier has sent me an email pointing out that I can buy myself an interview.

I think pilots need to value themselves a little more and not pay for an interview. $124 for a 20 minute interview is $372 an hour. The incentive seems to be more to not hire many people so they can do more interviews.

Would you invest in a company when the first step in being considered for a job there is to pay for an interview? I would expect the most talented would go elsewhere and I don't think I would invest.

Am I just ignoring reality?