No one is *gasp* trying to say a military pilot with zero 121 experience will be a better pilot in the beginning than a 5,000 hour regional pilot. The point you seem to be missing is that the big boys and girls are less interested in your flying skills than they are in the professionalism, leadership skills, and ability to operate in very high demand situations. A monkey can be taught to fly. But a monkey cannot be expected to lead people, be a manager, etc. That is why I think the majors are more interested in military folks, regional pilots with degrees, those who volunteer, and particularly those who have held management positions.
If you're a pilot, you can fly an airplane. If you're a leader, you can bring more to the table. And that is by no means limited to military folks. But from my short time around this particular block, the ones I hear of getting the calls do more within the company than push hunks of metal around the skies.
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.