Originally Posted by
Learflyer
To contradict the above post, plenty of FO's have been hired at the majors with no TPIC, nor did they have any 121 time whatsoever. No. Not unicorns at all.
Depends on what you mean by "major". Lower tier, yes, plenty getting called and that's probably going to continue.
For the big-six it is a unicorn thing and I don't think FDX/UPS/AA do it at all, my buddies in the know cannot figure out what the formula is, we have come to suspect that it's a lottery, they just randomly select a tiny handful of very young, very inexperienced pilots to help keep the enthusiasm up at the entry-level. Word spreads like wildfire, and pilot's pathological optimism will do the rest. Also possible they are trying to spread out the age demographic to minimize additional retirements over the next 15 years, and prevent another big retirement wave in 25 years.
The expats in my legacy class were all dual citizens and all had overseas CA experience. My Navy bros who went overseas are all coming back now, but they are mostly having to do a T&G at a regional first.