Originally Posted by
Gunter
We hire the friends of current hires. More than any other major. The Marine comment is not entirely off base either.
JL made sure a few marine fighter pilots came in with the "heavy, international, glass" types known then as the purple nuggets.
Flexes worked hard to make sure said nuggets made it through. At least one showed similar skill in SO training.
Yeah, I don't really know what all the fuss is about Astar's comment-at least from us line types who don't have any direct input into how the interview selections are made. While I personally do not think that this company has any background bias in the actual interviews, fact is walk around this place and you will find that most of our pilots have military backgrounds. I think that's reflective of some of things Gunter mentioned, but also it pretty much tracks how the industry hired up until the last big hiring period in the late 90's/early 2000's. The industry fell to roughly 50/50 mil/civ hiring wise in that era and I think our hiring has been reflective of that trend since that time as well. We have a lot of 'mixed' background people because of the industry turmoil of the last 9 years. On that note, I've noticed that of the civilians here, a pretty decent amount have prior military experience either as helo guys or non flight types. No numbers on it, but it does seem to be higher than at other carriers fwiw.
In the end, old Kit Darby was right when he said airlines interview people who are qualified and hire who they like. With new flight management in place since the last time we hired, and a 3 year + backup of 'friends' I'm sure they'll be a new set of 'chosen' ones going forward that we won't recognize until long after the smoke has cleared.