Originally Posted by HelloNewnan

Most major hires up until the later 80's were mil. Active duty commitments were shorter, so it wasn't just guard folks. FE was just another bid position at Delta, where folks at the bottom went, like 88B. 727C was the usual stop. As mentioned, age was also a thing until it started to go away in the mid 80s. As Badflaps said, 28-30 was the usual cutoff. Delta also had a mandatory 20/20 uncorrected for a lot of years, and other carriers had some quirky rules. AMR had a 2 day astronaut physical.

There were a smattering of civ, but they needed massive time (like 10x the mil time) to be competitive. Hard to do with a 28 year age limit, so there weren't many. Some came over as a part of mergers like Western, Republic and Ozark that had different hiring profiles. Republic was made up of a bunch of small carriers.