Originally Posted by
Hotel Kilo
IDK where this mentality comes from. It seems to come from a certain demographic and background. I was happy to just get hired here back in the day, and despite our warts and all, I'm happy I've been fortunate enough to have a pretty dang good career here are DAL.
Did we have insufferable captains back then? Yes. One in particular on the L1011. Good grief, he was a piece of work I tell you. The guy ran a tight ship though and he was very knowledgeable and a pretty dang good pilot. As much as he was a pain to fly with, I'd trust him when the crap hit the fan in a heartbeat. Any pilot group is going to have their fair share of insufferable pr!%*&$. It just comes with the territory. You learn to deal with it as an SO (back when new hires flew sideways) or FO.
Having sat in many meetings with our industry partners, I disagree that DAL is a more "PIC centric" place. PIC is PIC in the majors. The industry has shifted to a better place than when I was first hired, that's a fact. Many of you here have no idea what is was like 25+ years ago. We've definitely improved, as have all the others in this regard. I'll add, 25+ years ago this was a very fun place to fly and work. We had a good time and everyone seemed to get along. Not so much these days. The only constant is change.
I've also noticed some correlation from my personal list of "captains I will never emulate". But I'm trying not to generalize since plenty of good dudes also have identical backgrounds. But man, would be nice if the hiring process weeded out these dingdongs