Originally Posted by
tinman1
... and you have characters who would be otherwise not hire-able slip through the cracks. Whether it be due to qualifications (i.e. no college degree), skeletons in the closet, or odd personalities that don't jive well with others, these types are now going to be sitting in ground school at AA alongside street hires with very impressive resumes... And American is doing just that by inviting in whoever ENY, PDT, and PSA can scrape up at the current regional hiring standards.
If I were a CEO, I would be concerned about these very things. As a pilot though, why do you care what yahoo is sitting in the aircraft next to yours? That being said, the airline interview screening process has serious limitations in evaluating the true merit of an applicant. Some of the biggest ash wholes as well as idiots that I have flown with have been persons that had very "hirable" resumes. In fact one of my most memorable flying experiences was with a low time Former AirForce Fighter pilot AA Flowback that couldn't make a decision to save his life. (literally). He nearly killed us in a perfectly good airplane over a malfunction that had cleared itself about 20 minutes earlier.
Northwest's solution to the problem you pose was to conduct the Compass Interviews themselves. In my opinion, the Commutair Flow is the perfect system for weeding out the bad seeds. The company will access to years of records (experience) with the person and has the authority to prevent the person from moving up.