My brother is 40 years old. He has always wanted to become an airline pilot. He was arrested about 7 years ago for shoplifting. Won't go into details, but instead of opting for an expensive trial pleading innocent his lawyer suggested pre-trial diversion. Told him "unless you wanna be in law enforcement someday, getting the arrest expunged won't keep you from doing anything." He did 3 months probation and 20hrs community service. His arrest record was expunged. He wants to pursue a career in aviation but worries the major carriers will still see the arrest (no conviction) via a federal database. Would this be a disqualifier from the major carriers? If the arrest was expunged would the majors carriers even know?

Thanks.

 

Tough. That may not be expunged in the federal database, either by design or admin errors.

I'm not entirely certain these days how much access the air carriers have to the data base, but the airport SIDA authorities would. An expungement should not count for SIDA, but they might still see the arrest.

Airlines these days are more limited by state employment laws, but that depends on the state. They are more likely to ask only about arrests, vice convictions, these days.

I will say that most of us who have been around management and hiring can be pretty tolerant of youthful mistakes, say at age 13 or maybe even age 23. The brain is not fully developed until age 25 or so, and judgement is the known weakness (that's why you have to be 25 to rent a car, insurance rules speak cold hard truth). They also say a person's personality and identity is full developed by age 30...

But if I somehow found out an applicant had a theft issue after age 30, that would be a huge red flag, essentially no-go for me without some serious mitigating circumstances (I can't even imagine what that would be). That's for any job, but most especially aviation, where trust and integrity are vital.

So I don't have a real good answer. It would depend on what questions the airlines ask (look up the applications, they are all online), and how much info they can obtain. Keep in mind there are also private databases which may capture court records (which can be searched online) and retain them forever... 1st amendment would probably prevent the government from forcing an expungement of such a private database.

Also, not a good idea to lie to an airline, if you get caught you would be fired, and probably be finished in 121, which is not what you want after spending $100K and a few years to get to 1500 hours.

 

It’s all about the “spin”.

I had to feed the family and stole the bread. It was life or death. Climbed out of it and now want a better future.

Boom. Hired and included in the local paper as rags to riches story...a real tear-jerker.

 

Um, no. They will not want to hear about how your crime was justified, even in the context of the time. The only acceptable answer when asked is that it was a mistake, you learned from it, and are a changed person. Seriously you have to convince them you've truly changed, they won't hire you otherwise. Mitigation, if you were young, can be that you ran with the wrong crowd, folks understand how that can happen with youth.

 

This^^^. Shoplifting at 33... I guess anything could happen, but highly, highly doubtful that this gets spun like a check ride failure.

 

Shoplifting at 33?

I wouldn't hire him to house sit and feed the family dog for a three day weekend, far less to be up front shooting an approach to minimums with my family in the seats in back. And no, I don't want to hear the excuses nor do I care to walk a mile in his mocassins.

At some point in your life you either have grown up or you aren't going to. What that exact age is that you actually become RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR OWN ACTIONS has been debated a lot, both socially and legally, old enough to marry, old enough to be drafted, old enough to vote, old enough to buy beer or cigarettes, or a firearm. The exact age may differ from state to state, but in no state is it as old as 33 years.

 

I think this warrants more details...

 

He was with his wife and kids at a department store. His kindergarten aged son tossed about 7 different shoes from the displays into the cart and a couple fell into the diaper bag. Mind you that none of them matched as they came off the display rack. They were all right foot shoes. My brother sees the ones in the cart and puts them back. As they leave they're approached by loss prevention. They willingly go back inside. Loss prevention finds two shoes in the diaper bag. 2 right footed non matching shoes. Then loss prevention associate asks "wheres the jewelry, the cops are on their way." My brother and wife are clueless. Apparently after seeing the kid toss shoes in the cart loss prevention sees my brother and his wife shopping for jewelry. Not expensive stuff, but the cheap crap that runs 5-20 bucks that's attached to the little white cards mounted all over the spindle displays. Loss prevention finds a few white cards where jewelry has been removed. Police come, jewelry items were never found even after allowing police to search their persons and all belongings. Loss prevention said they'd let it go if they handed over the jewelry but they honestly didn't have it. Loss prevention insisted they were lying about the jewelry and claimed my brother told his kid to put the stuff in the diaper bag, and said either the husband or wife was getting arrested. My brother asked the cop what the charge was. Cop says misdemeanor. Brother says "take me." And so they did even though the cops themselves thought it silly. But technically they left with two different shoes allowing them to charge the theft of 2 pairs of shoes. About $80. Anything over $50 is a class B misdemeanor. He got an attorney. Attorney says you can fight and win but it could cost into the thousands, or we can request pretrial diversion and get it expunged since my brother hasn't had even a speeding ticket in the last 10 years. He chose option b solely due to cost. About $1000 after expungement. Sorry for the novel, but you asked.
Aside from the judgements of those on this forum the details really don't matter. No matter the details, he was arrested for petty theft. The story is ludicrous and if he tries to paint that picture in an interview it will sound just as it is. Ludicrous.

 

If he has official records charging him with the theft of non-matching baby shoes, and he has an otherwise typical white collar resume, he might actually be able to explain that one away. Unfortunately all of the real criminals have explanations for how they were wrongly convicted too.

Whether it's a big problem depends on whether he has to check the box on the job app... it's easier and cheaper for HR to interview applicants with clean records, that way they don't have to incur the time, expense, and risk of adjudicating the circumstances of such a record.

He should look at the online applications of many airlines, regionals and majors, to see exactly what they ask. He should obtain a copy of his FBI database records (I think you need FOIA, but that's easy).

 

They weren't baby shoes. The were hideous high heeled womens shoes. I gotta think there is no record of that. Pretty sure it all disappeared upon expungement. Per the explanation of the lawyer the arrest will be in a federal database, not necessarily the details due to the fact it was only a class B misdemeanor.

To your point about real criminals having explanations, you are correct and he's not naive to this. If i heard that story I'd thank it was B.S. too. Unfortunately that's how it went down. When his D.L. number is ran its clean, but getting the FBI background check sounds like the starting point.