Originally Posted by QOLmax

How old are you? Do you live near IAD? What are your career aspirations (make big $, fly lots, fly little, big airplanes, CA upgrade soonest, other)?

If you're going to make the jump, the right time would have been 2 years ago. But the next best time is ASAP. UAL is hiring over 50 new pilots a week, and that is forecast to continue for "quite a while." We are just over 16k pilots right now, company stated goal is 28k pilots by the end of the decade...many view that as a naïvely optimistic goal, but 20-22k pilots is definitely possible given the sheer # of aircraft orders on the books.

If you live near IAD, it looks like UAL is poised for decent growth there over the next decade. Plus it has all the aircraft types, so it's a good base if you want int'l flying. Right now you can get IAD within 1-4 months after hire.