Originally Posted by
SaltyDog
The Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act of 1994 (USERRA 38 U.S.C. 4301-4335) protects your civilian job while serving our country in the military.
Employers are not legally allowed to discriminate and not hire solely for your current service. You do have to start employment at your employer (airline) at the time the employer needs to hire an employee.
Ideally, you would use the USERRA protections from where you want to be, not necessarily where you are currently employed.
What Salty's saying is your best bet would be to get hired at a major, then go to military training. But given your age, the timing to fly RW might be kind of tight unless you're sufficiently competitive (turbine PIC, grades, training record, whole person) that you can get called by majors immediately.
If you really want to fly military, better go do guard/reserve RW right now. The bigs will still be hiring (even more so!) when you get back to your regional plus you'll have military wings. You'll trade a little major airline seniority for a personal passion.
If your priority is major airline seniority, then get the apps out, pound the pavement and get hired at a suitable career destination airline. Then join the military, perhaps fly RW if still young enough, otherwise in a non-flying capacity (age limit for the later is 35 or even up to 40 IIRC).