Do high school suspensions count?
 

I'm a sophmore in high school and I was recently suspended from school for "conspiracy to vandalize" or something to that matter. All I did was dump some mac-n-cheese on the floor and apparently it stained (stupid I know). I was wondering if this suspension will ever affect me getting a job as a commercial pilot. Thanks.

I was suspended in high school for 5 days. Got in a fight.

That’s when I was a “minor” so...NO. None of anyone’s business or right to know. I’ve been just fine. Don’t worry.

Now if you start “vandalizing” things as an adult. Well, that might be a problem.

Probably not, but when you ask if it "counts," you'll need to be more specific. By the time you get to an airline, you should have high school far behind you. If you're getting another flying job right out of high school, however, the employer may be more interested in your recent history. if your suspension affects your grade, then it may come up. Otherwise, nobody cares what you did in high school, so long as it didn't result in driving infractions, an unfavorable employment history, or result in poor grades.

I would caution you to fly straight, so to speak, as your life is under somewhat of a microscope, and there are plenty of others who can be hired with clean histories. Your mac and cheese experiment will rank low on the totem pole, but don't let it become a habit.

Airlines do not to my knowledge do any detailed background checks with High Schools, and even if they did disciplinary info would be private. It's not any sort of criminal matter, so it's not public record. I also don't recall any questions about school suspensions, but if they ask BE HONEST. A learning moment at that age won't keep them from hiring you, but getting caught in a lie will get you fired for sure.

Don't worry about it, most of us have done something like that, just try to stay out of trouble in the future (careful who you hang with if you want to go places later in life...)

Now go back to chasing girls while you can.

Did you know that the difference between a metal tube rocket filled with "candy fuel" (KNO3,and sugar) and a pipe bomb is about 0.3 seconds of burn time? And that using a metal tube casing instead of a cardboard tube liner will decrease the burn time about 0.4 seconds?

Well I didn't either when I was in junior high, but the vice principal liked me so I just got four weeks detention and the BATF guy had bigger fish to fry apparently so he let me off with an @$$ chewing and the Intel guy who dug up the old BATF file years later when I was getting my TS-SCI clearance was actually a cross trainee from EOD and he thought the whole episode was hilarious.

You can indeed recover from mistakes, but try to get through high school and college with all both eyes and all fingers intact and with a minimum of incriminating paperwork you'll have to explain to someone in some airline HR shop who might lack the sense of humor of that Intel guy. That's my recommendation anyway.

It seems like a non-issue to me. Just keep the record fairly clean going forward.

The applications will ask for High School GPA, if you graduated, and any achievements. I have not been asked about high school at all in interviews. Suspension in itself is not a crime. Most of the time the principal makes the decision, not a judge or jury. As mentioned above, as long as you don't plan on becoming a conservative judge you're fine.

*Too soon?