I would love to fly for one of the carriers mentioned in the previous posts. I was born and raised abroad, and have a real respect for the opportunities that cultures other than the US can provide. They open your eyes to different ways of looking at things, new experiences with food and living arrangements, and at the same time you'll find that people are people everywhere, who most often cherish the same things we do, and sometimes do it in a better fashion than we do! Most Asian cultures are not as crass or self centered as we are in the US. Most Asian cultures still believe in respect....a concept that has been all but lost on the last generation of Americans.

What prevents me (and others) from doing so, in the far east where it's feasible for me to communte, is not a bad attitude, or an unwillingness to commute, or a history of employment problems; it's the very stringent and inflexable requirements. I have more than 10,000 hours of PIC jet time in narrow bodys with gross weights of 150,000 pounds or more, but unless you have the type rating with 500 hours of PIC time on the carrier's aircraft, it's no dice. Even if you do, you still have to meet age requirements of approximately 45 to 47 for F/O positions, or as low as 50 for some direct entry level captain positions. In addition, you have to be current with a P/C in the applicable aircraft within the last 6 months, and current with 3 takeoffs and landings in the last 90 days. For those of us who are furloughed, this becomes more difficult with each passing week. If there is a real shortage, we'll begin to see these requirements loosened a bit to tap an otherwise extremely well qualified group of US pilots.