Originally Posted by
Andy
Well, anyone with a pulse can get hired at the regionals right now. And in the past, anyone with a pulse could get hired at Eastern, TWA, Independence Air, and a host of other defunct airlines.
You've been hauling cargo for AirJapan for around a decade so any 'experience' you have being hired in the US is comically dated. IIRC, you even regaled at how fine an experience your commute from the states is - drinking Courvoisier on your 10+ hour flight to/from your domicile (Gen Lee style on flightinfo where you posted as, fittingly, Dumb Pilot).
From reviewing your 'experience' on flightinfo, you were busy trying to apply to Focus Air Cargo (defunct dirbag operation) at one point, living in MSP (running a side business renting out crashpads). You even stated that when you went to AirJapan, you were a regional pilot, so it's not like you've been hired by a lot of decent US companies. From reading your CV on flightinfo, it sounds like you've been hired by a lot of US bottomfeeders and were too impatient or unqualified to be hired by a reputable US carrier.
Don't pretend that getting hired with a "reputable" carrier in the USA is some great feat of merit. Depending on what carriers you define as being reputable, the process is either highly politicized or not particularly competitive at the moment. Technically, anyone with 1500 hours on a prop job can get in line for that coveted legacy job through flow and preferential hiring programmes. Not everyone desires to apply their decades worth of seniority to start over at an RJ outfit in order to have a reasonable chance of making it to AA,DL, UA. Making it to those destinations is largely based on your luck as far as fitting into whatever bracket HR favors at the moment (Mil-Flow-Female-Black-Gay). For those of us who are just regular mutts and don't have the time or luxury to participate in special interest events there just aren't many slots.
The Legacy game didn't favor me despite my slugging it two legs to RJ reserve while taking my degree while supporting my family. I did all this for a decade only so I could be in a favorable position with them "when the gates were to open". When hiring did start I was in for a rude awakening. A not so particularly talented female student of mine got hired at DL a year after touching her first RJ, Colleagues at competing RJ outfits who settled for inferior contracts were awarded flows in order to attract replacement pilots and keeping wages low.
In the case of LCC's there really isn't much difficulty involved with getting on board. I just wasn't interested in doing the same thing I had been doing for the last ten years on a slightly bigger plane.
Thank god Norwegian came along...