Originally Posted by
rickair7777
Honestly... airlines (majors) are frankly looking pretty grim for you right, for the mid-term, any that hire will have their pick of fully experienced airline pilots with multiple types, and few or zero busts.
The retirements are still out there, so they might loosen up standards in 5-8 years but it's also possible that the covid carnage will drag out for so long that it nullifies much of the retirement bubble. I think the later would be the extreme case, more likely that there will still be some retirement-driven hiring mid-late in the decade.
Corporate might make more sense for you, that tends to be somewhat more personality driven (who you know) as opposed to being filtered by a computer from a stack of 10K applications. Also.., any aviation profession knows that it's possible for a young person to struggle with initial training for any of several reasons, but still go on the acquire lots of professional experience and a very solid track record with all necessary lessons learned. Corporate will likely hire someone like that (I would personally). Majors on the other hand are concerned at the HR and legal level about how your past record (which can never be erased) will appear in the media and courtrooms in the event of a serious accident (reference Colgan).
Failing 4 primary check rides did not stop me from getting hired at a regional 9 years ago when even regionals were still kind of choosy with whom they hire as majors hadn’t yet started hiring off the street following the ‘08-09’ financial crisis.
I would consider passing check rides in larger, more complex aircraft, especially as your career progresses, redemption for any pitfalls in small piston aircraft. The more passes under your belt going forward the merrier.
I think you shouldn’t have any issues getting hired at a regional of your choice once things start picking back up, which might be a good route to go as you rack up a large amount of flight time in a relatively small time frame.
Even if a corporate flying gig is your end goal, starting off at a regional makes sense for the experience unless you know the right people or have a knack for networking.
Flying professionally is not unlike the military in that it requires a lot of patience and persistence, as you have already discovered.
You’ll get a lot of negativity from people, especially in these precarious times, but altogether I think you will find lots of opportunity down the road. Good luck!