Originally Posted by
Celeste
How is that an oranges to oranges comparison?
I'm not going to argue that military training isn't better than civilian.
However, mil guys are getting picked up with less than 2000 hours.... I've recently sat on several jumpseats at delta and southwest with 1500-1800 hour mil FOs. Meanwhile there's lots of captains with 8000+ hours that aren't getting the call.
You can't tell me that a regional pilot with 6000-7000 hours doing the same exact type of flying, into the same exact airports, trusted with the same paying customers as United, delta, etc, can't do as good of a job or *gasp* even better than these mil pilots getting picked up with 2000-3000 (and fewer) hours.
Standard pifall you've fallen for regarding hours. A fighter guy/gal is lucky to get maybe 250 hours in a year. Most of our sorties are around 1.1 avg duration with maybe flying 3-4 times a week. So that 1500 to 1800 FO you saw probably has about 8+ years of high performance jet time under their belt. Mil heavy drivers will generally have more flight time in same timeframe given their longer sortie durations.
No one here is telling you anything Celeste, it is the airline hiring Dept that are speaking to you. Don't hate on the ex mil folks. They are there because there's obviously something the majors want from that sort of pilot.
If it were left to me, I would have all flying brought in-house to the majors where it belongs and scrap this whole "regional" concept, but we all know the story there don't we.