Originally Posted by redbaronahp

Not necessarily. I was hired last year with 5 internal recommendations. All were FO’s at the time of my invite. I graduated from a 4 yr university with a 2.8 GPA. I had a 4.0 GPA in grad school, but got hired at an airline and never finished the degree, so that didn’t help me. I also took an online certificate course at an Ivy League university.

As for flying, I had been a 135 check airman, a 121 check airman, and instructed at an AF aero club and had IFS students. I was told that allowed me to check the mil IP box without having served in the military and I was not questioned on it. I flew as captain on the ATR, CRJ, and as an FO in 737NG’s.

I did not have family connections. I tried to check as many boxes off in the application as I could and I literally updated daily for over a year, though I don’t know if that helped. I’d wake up, sign in, and hit save to update the time stamp on my app, then go about my day. Every few weeks I’d update the flight time. Not sure what triggered the invite but it came a few weeks after adding the 5th internal rec, an FO that I never flew with but knew from college.