Originally Posted by
tsimmns927
This is exactly my plan. Buy a cheap, but safe plane. Go in with a buddy or two to save on cost, fly it in circles and build my hours. Honestly my goal is to get to a regional, but I can’t afford to go from a 90k a year job working contract maintenance on military aircraft to 20 bucks an hour with no guarantee of flying at all unless I have a student. I think more and more people according to a FB group I’m in are going this route also.
In years gone by regionals preferred professional commercial experience (CPL or CFI), vice PPL time because it's a bit more relevant to airline ops when you have to balance competing interests of safety, economics, and customer satisfaction... especially the safety aspect, go/no-go pressure to fly, etc.
If that question comes up at an interview, have an answer ready, how you carefully considered safety, went above and beyond checking conditions, NOTAMS, flew in actual when it was safe to do so, etc. Don't say you had no safety concerns thanks to velcro and an ipad/portable garmin (yes, heard that one before).
But I doubt they'll bother to be that picky going forward, they certainly weren't before covid.