Wow. That's a bit over the top on the airlines' part. :rolleyes:

Then again, I'm not a freelancer...I own a company. (A small one.) And if any airline asks for me to bother my clients by asking them to write statements, I'd probably tell 'em "TBNT."

They will all (except maybe bottom-feeder regionals) ask for client verification from self-employed applicants. Not just airlines do this, but any reputable employer. And they typically want more than one client.

They want to confirm what you were doing during that time-frame, ie not running drugs, serving prison time, making gay porn, etc.

What if you don't have clients? ie- run an online website with shopping cart?

They will want some sort of human verification as to how you spent the period of time in question. Perhaps they'll want reference(s) who are aware of your business activities. If they don't feel they're able to adequately account for how you spent the time, they simply won't hire you.

May not be fair, but there's no requirement that it be fair in that regard. They'd hate to find out after the fact that you were really in Yemen attending AQ boot camp.

To the OP....

If you are concerned about how it would look to your future employer AKA the regional airline that you are going to join, then there is a simple solution.

Ask them a direct question at the interview or later to the HR person:

"Do you guys will have any problem if I (you) continued to work PART TIME on your DAYS OFF with your existing NON AVIATION employer on a NON FLYING JOB to supplement your income?"

Depending on the answer, you can proceed accordingly...

I, personally asked the same question in the exact same wording as above and the response I got was:

" What you do on your days off is up to you; As long as you don't fly commercially, even as a CFI & you don't do anything that may jeopardize your ability to fly, we don't care."

If you don't ask, you will never know what that particular company's policy is regarding your situation....

The most that Regional airline can say is NO but I don't think they will, specially in today's environment..

However, your existing corporate employer may be a difficult sell.......

Yep, my plan was to ask directly to airline.
However, as I said, I can't tell my employer I am going to play airline pilot for 3 months and if things go well then bye bye but if not see you then!

People take leaves of absences all the time in the real world for reasons that are none of anyone's business. The airline is eventually going to call/mail your previous employers though to check references like any other employer would but also to satisfy regulatory burdens. What do you want to happen when that call is made?

I do as well, a small LLC. And I do a bit of post incident/accident human factors assessment and retraining in the corporate world. So it's unlikely a Fortune 500 company (or even a 135/91 small operations) is going to go, "Yeah, we had him out here after we crashed that King Air to do CRM training!"

Last time I just told them, "Hey do you read XXXX magazine? Check out the June issue. That's what I've been doing. Or, did you send anyone to that XXXX safety day? That guy that talked about vigilance, situational awareness, and distraction? That was me."

I left my full time employer at the end of Feb so I've had to explain my existence since then (I've had my side company for about ten years now).

My issue is one of recency - I've been doing safety/teaching for the last six years so none of the majors will touch me even after 9300 hours, 3 type ratings, turbine PIC, etc. I've got to go play minor league ball for a while to get called back to the big leagues. And it's been a whole different world dealing with the regionals again. Uggh.:(

That all sounds good, but in my industry (advertising), nobody checks client references of self-employed individuals. 18 years involved with hiring decisions at some of the biggest agencies around, so I know this to be true. We will check your last W-2 employer, but I have never seen a freelancer's clients asked for references.

Airlines are subject to PRIA though, Pilot Records Improvement Act if you are not familiar.