Originally Posted by
Cyio
It certainly doesn't take knowledge of dropping a bomb to fly an airbus and you cant tell me that experience is more relevant than that of a regional pilot who has probably had a dozen or more 121 emergencies, countless re-routes, fuel issues etc...I also agree that a military pilot can pick up all that very easily, this is rocket science by any means.
Again, I feel I need to throw out that I fully support our military men and women, but it does seem to be a bit unfair/biased in this hiring situation.
If you think your dozen emergencies, countless re-routes, and fuel issues are unique to your regional experience, you have a severe lack of knowledge of what a military pilot does. Airlines don’t hire military pilots for their skills at dropping bombs or dogfighting. They do it for the exact reasons you listed as being unique to you.
Imagine completing an 8 hour mission and flying back to the boat at night . While shooting your approach, you lose electrical power and have to now fly off of your standby instruments while trying to fly your way to a good start 3/4 miles behind the ship on speed and on glide slope. You command too much power at the ramp and end up going around. Luckily, your displays come to life again after slamming into the deck just past the 4 wire. The tower rep calls and tells you that your signal is divert due to your low fuel state and lack of airborne tankers. You break out your charts and approach plates, hand fly your bingo profile towards the nearest divert in a foreign country. You work your international clearance and shoot an emergency fuel approach down to mins and land successfully. Oh, I forgot to mention you are the flight lead and your wingman has his own emergency and fuel issues that you have been monitoring and talking him through while he’s flying formation.
This scenario and ones like it occur daily in military aviation.
Hopefully this makes it a little more fair/unbiased when you think about it.