Originally Posted by
Hotel Kilo
It's more than just the 9E flows, its the lack of overall aviation chops of many of our new hires. CFI ----> regional ----> mainline 121 in under 4 years is just not working well. Our training programs were designed for the ex-mil pilot with ~ 8 years experience or a civilian with about the same level if not a bit more time. Looking at about 10 years there. The quality of candidates and those we are giving CJOs is of some concern. It's been discussed at the last 2 LCA meetings and at the ASF last week in Chicago. It's got people's attention. As you said Nick, we're hiring folks now that wouldn't have gotten a first look at a regional 10-12 years ago.
The airline and training department are going to have to learn to deal with it and figure it out. Maybe the initial training program needs to be made longer or have requal at shorter intervals. Maybe IOE needs to go to 100 hours or more.
Regionals figured out how to effectively train a 1500 hour CFI to fly a regional jet.
Military is never going to produce pilots in the numbers it has before. We are probably one generation away from seeing military guys with no actual flight time just drones.
The candidates that Delta and every other major are getting are what is available in the pool of applicants.
Its not just this industry- its accross the board. Anything that is not "influencer" with 100k on day one to work remote unsupervised with no expectations of performance it seems no one is interested in.
Military cannot recruit near enough even after relaxing standards
New cops in CA might not even have to be a US Citizen.
Fire Department (my former career)- It took me 6 years of testing and becoming a paramedic to get hired. Now every department is practically begging high school grads to apply and they will send them to training to get EMT and fire academy certifications.
Have you tried to find a mechanic lately? I got rid of my diesel due to lack of mechanics and the ones that were around can command $150-200 an hour.
Most schools have significantly dropped standards compared to when millenials attended, even further from when generation X, and even further from the boomers.
Only thing that can be done is controlling what they can. Training department cannot control the applicant pool. The only choice is to evolve the training departments to work with what they are getting.