What's Timmy up to?

I don't think he is back from his last lunar mission yet.:D

So a man can attend a women in aviation fair, just like a straight guy can go on a gay cruise, and a gun control advocate can join the NRA.
God bless America.

Just go to the event
 

Packrat is 100% correct. Just because it's an OBAP or WIA event, doesn't mean you should not attend, we've hired guys at Atlas recently, who attended both events.

Atlas will be at both WAI in Orlando March 6-8, and at the OBAP event March 20 in Las Vegas.

It would only be a "slap in the face" if the foundation of it was unfair preference to begin with. WIA is an outreach and networking platform and they do a great job with that. There are far more men in commercial aviation as pilots than women. That has nothing to do with discrimination and any claim to such, or any follow on claim or action of preference or "special minimums" based only on sex is disgusting and mocks the many talented hard working time building females that have legitimately made it to where they are. That said, there does need to be a disproportionate effort at the initial gateway phase. Ditto for every "minority" or whatever we're calling the term this week.

WIA organizing a job conference is absolutely fair game and what they should be doing. And yes anyone can and should participate.

And yes I am fully aware of the irony of what a firestorm a Men In Aviation and all other equivalents would bring, but that takes nothing away from trying to get demographics to take a look at professions they for whatever reason aren't as actively pursuing.

Go, support the effort and be a part of it. The more men that go the more we will all start to remove arbitrary preferences from the equation and start to view one another as equals.

Amen, Brother.

You want to know how you fix that flawed system? Stop recommending pilots. For example Delta recently hasn't hired a single pilot that didn't have an internal recommendation. Those with buddy-buddy recommendations and the more the better are getting the interviews.

Imagine for a moment that not a single Delta pilot made a recommendation for a newhire pilot candidate. Delta management would not know who to call and would therefore be forced to start calling the most qualified. When the predominant system is based on recommendations, you get calls for the most connected, not the most qualified. So if your complaint in aviation is we aren't hiring the most qualified pilots, then the fix is to stop recommending pilots to management. Let them pick the best of the best.

I went to the conference last year and I'm convinced that is why I received my Delta invite. I had one LOR for Delta, 2100 hours mostly F/A-18 and zero other connections to Delta period and thankfully was in the initial batch of interview invites that went out. Or, my invite was just the luck of the draw.

My advice is to loiter around, start conversations with the people around you, and network, network, network. If you're military, there's typically a flight suit social at one of the convention bars that I ended up at last year and it was packed with great people. I was wearing a suit but managed to strike up a conversation with a couple of the pilots (T-34 instructors) and they invited me to join their gathering. You may not make the connection that gets you an interview, but you're sure to have a good time nonetheless. They all know why you're there, they all have been in our shoes and they all respect the effort that prospective new-hires are putting in and some want to help in anyway they can.

In the end, attending the conference got me fired up and excited for the years ahead. Totally worth it. Granted my squadron gave me the keys to an F/A-18 with a student to get some cross country training along the way which eased the pain of getting to and from Nashville.

Last year, they made it clear men were very welcome. Took our money. And then grabbed all the women out of the long lines for the job fair and put them ahead of all the men. It was incredibly unclassy, IMO. The irony was comical. I only saw one woman refuse to jump the queue like that. I'd hire her.

I've come to a realization as I've aged and it has to do with the quality of an individual.

When you ask a plumber a car salesman how much experience he has, the standard reply is usually their age minus 15 or 20. So the average 55 year old plumber has 35 to 40 years of experience. With that much experience, you can only assume that a plumber who is 55 has to be superior to a plumber who is 35 who only has 15 to 20 years experience. Right?

In fact, I just had work done to my house that was done by a carpenter with many years of experience. Thankfully I rent, because ON PAPER, this guy had a boat load of experience but his work was terrible. His personality was even worse.

On paper, it is difficult to get a realistic impression on the quality of a pilot based solely on his numbers. And then there's the whole personality thing to consider.