Originally Posted by
The Dominican
To me the way the industry discriminates against very experienced part 91 or part 135 pilots is just plain ridiculous, I have a good friend that is currently flying a GV, he was between jobs about a year ago and although he has over 12,000 hours with over 6,000 jet PIC (GIV, GV, Falcon 2000, Hawker) has 500 hours as an F/O on the B-762 and flies an A/C that is not that far off in weight from a 737, A320 literally all over the world, I couldn't even get him an interview because of the part of the regs under which he flies, but a guy flying F/O on a 737 domestically with little PIC and little international experience qualifies because of the part of the regs under which he flies. Sorry for the rant but I'm I the only one who thinks that is just plain stupid? Out of my going on three decades in aviation about half of it was flying corporate and I flew with folks back in those days that I wouldn't hesitate for one second to put my family in the back of their plane as DEC's on a heavy jet on their very first flight out of OJT.
It's not exactly discrimination...
There is some difference in handling between an RJ and a heavy...but even a G-V is waaaay closer to the RJ end of the spectrum as far as that goes. Just because it's a "heavy" in the 91 world doesn't really relate. A CRJ-900 or an E-190 are both comparable to a G-V.
International experience is good...but most domestic airlines do not really place a premium on that as far as I can tell (UPS does, but they like heavy time too).
What the airlines really like are two things...
- Somebody who is familiar with 121 operations. They tend to be more comfortable with an entry level pilot who is used to multiple legs with short layovers in Duluth as opposed to a guy who does one long leg and then spends four days living the expense account life at a premium resort. Same reason that 91/135 operators tend to be leery of airline pilots. But really...how long was your buddy going to sit reserve in LGA once the economy picked up and the 91 "heavy" operators start calling? Yeah, that's what I thought
We all know what the G-V background is worth, and it's more than domestic narrowbody reserve.
- Internal recs. Since a lot of major pilots come from regionals, they bring their buddies along behind them. There are even some majors which used to prefer pilots from a certain military branch...no logic there, just cultural.