Experimental, GVine,

Thanks for the responses. It's hard to believe that in 4 pages of responses, I've received about three actual answers to the original question. A lot of people interested in giving an opinion, which if informative, is appreciated. It seems that there is a lot of folks on this forum who resist the idea of an airline pilot not having been an instructor.

I can tell you I've flown with both Captains and First Officers who come from military, civilian with cfi, civilian without cfi backgrounds. From all three backgrounds I've flown with below average, average, above average, and excellent pilots. A lot of the excellent pilots I've flown with over the years were flying high-performance military jets within 200 hours. Many of the excellent pilots were guys/gals who had never instructed and were at the airlines at around 300 hours, and many of them were in also flight instructors.

What I've seen determine the quality of the pilot I've flown with is attention to detail, the ability/desire/capacity to learn, good ability to communicate and work well with others, a love for the job, and a positive attitude. Somewhere on that list is also hours flown, but not at the top of the list, and neither is whether the pilot has been a CFI or not.

I've flown with turbine pilots who have more than 10K hours who are nowhere as competent, safe or professional as some of the under 4K hours pilots I've flown with. Of course, at some point, hours are of importance. But again, from the first airline training I went through, flight instructors (and I mean no disrespect), who had been mainly flying around in the right seat of a C172 or similar for the past 2000+ hours were having a MUCH higher washout rate than the 250-500 hour pilots coming into the airline with airline-specific training in high-performance complex aircraft. This I say from direct experience as a sim instructor in turbine aircraft for pilots who were first exposed to turbine/high altitude flying. All my personal observations and opinion of course. It can be just as fun and rewarding of a career without the need to be a CFI.

Great pilots come from ALL different backgrounds... the CFI route is only ONE of the possible paths to being a safe, professional, above average airline pilot.