Originally Posted by
TiredSoul
Here’s a theory: Logged hours are used as a gauge to guess your age.
14.000 hrs @ 500hrs/year > 28 years which means you’re probably 50-ish, like your coffee cold and bitter and your application goes to the bin.
5.000-6.000 hrs is early-mid 30’s.
They’re looking for a particular profile and lets face it, age discrimination is easily camouflaged.
I'm in my late-30s, have been here for 7-8 years and I still don't have 6,000 hours, that would be a poor metric to use. It shouldn't be all that hard to figure out your age with all the other information provided, high school, college, jobs, etc. In fact, I'm guessing a simple algorithm could pretty much nail your age if they wanted.
On an anecdotal note, I've worked for three different airlines. In each of my indoc classes we had at least one mid-50s pilot in the class, with the class at my regional having two. Not a single one of them made it through training and onto the line. I'm not saying that older pilots can't hack it, it could very well be that all those guys just happened to be weak swimmers. It would be interesting to see if there is data on failure rates vs age vs experience.