Originally Posted by
Mickey
I’m a CJO holder that is coming from a regional. As class approaches, I’m trying to plan out where I see myself going and settling down in the next few years. At my regional, the climate and culture at different bases is drastic. At the HQ base, everyone is incredibly stuck up, entitled, and the rest of the bases loathe flying with an HQ based crew.
My base is the opposite, known for a great group of pilots, we kind of ‘do our own thing’.
My experience in the military is rather aligned with this, the further away you get from the flag, the better the climate and culture is.
My question is if United is a big enough company that this doesn’t exist or if there are nuances about different bases. If so, what’s the widely accepted best climate/culture base?
Thank you for the insight!
I’m curious as to which regional this is. A lot of times things like this aren’t really exclusive to aviation. This in my opinion is a society problem , and an airline pilot groups exist within that society.
United is over 18,000 pilots….so you bet there are traits, trends, and stereotypes. One very noticeable thing is the volume of “older” pilots. There is nothing wrong with this but compared to the regionals, where it is rare people stay until retirement, there are just a lot more. Just as in society older people act differently than their counterparts in their 30’s.
In my experience there is a HUGE difference between Wide and Narrow, naturally this isn’t a CRM issue as you would never fly together, but when people do switch fleets, you become known as the plane you last flew. Example: “Oh, I’m doing a two day tomorrow with that 78 guy that commutes from _____” yet this an Airbus.
It is interesting to hear you had some military time, you will also notice United is more of a military culture, again there is nothing wrong with this, it merely is a reflection of the fact that the pilot group is made of more than half prior military. Whereas obviously at a regional the percentage is tiny, and at ULCC/LCC it’s bigger yet maybe 10-20%. As you probably have noticed from your societal experience non military people act different than military people.
As a non military person I have noticed a difference between military pilots who flew as part of crew and those in a single seat, again nothing wrong with this difference……just that it is very noticeably different.
Now to your question the domeciles: Yes of course there is a difference.