Originally Posted by
JB22
I'm hearing more and more that FOs who moved on to spirit and other low cost companies are having better luck at getting hired at legacy carriers due to them wanting to protect the regional feed. Why pillage from the regionals when you can plunder from the competition. Not sure what I will do.
There are a lot of pilots who don't understand the difference between causality and correlation.
For example, lets say you have two pilot groups--one of which has 5,000 pilots and one of which has 1,000. United might hire 10% of each pilot group (500 from one--100 from the other), and then out on the internet forums you have a bunch of pilots from those companies claiming one regional is favored by United and the other isn't, when in fact it's simply math/chance--no selection bias at all.
There could be a "correlation but not causation" bias operating when ULCC pilots get hired at legacies in higher numbers than regional pilots. The people getting hired at Spirit--as a group, on average--likely have college degrees, were not satisfied with their regional, and/or have some money in the bank or a rich spouse allowing them to take that first year paycut and not starve. Add it all up and the group of people who have left regionals for ULCCs are likely a more "hireable" group than the average regional CA/FO, if that makes sense.
It is likely that there is no selection bias of regional vs. ULCC pilot at the legacies, but rather that the pilots who have left regionals for ULCCs are inherently more thirsty for career progress and/or hire-able than the average regional pilot.
Just a thought.