If you REALLY want to work for an airline like Southern, just go to Atlas (which has a much better contract than Southern). Atlas owns, and does the hiring for Atlas/Southern. Atlas classes are nowhere near full, so you can just request Atlas, vs Southern, after being hired out of the Atlas interview.

With current contracts, Spirit, Omni and Kalitta are better than Atlas (and, of course, Southern).

Southern (& Atlas) won’t have a new contract for probably a minimum of 2 to 3 years - probably longer. And if forced into another amalgamation/arbitration contract...then it may be different than what we have now but it certainly won’t be anything close to industry standard. More like industry sub-basement. And by the time you find that out you will have missed out on many valuable years of seniority & money at a more enlightened airline.

In a nutshell —-> I’d say Spirit is the easy choice here.

Ps- Be very wary of what they tell you in interviews & job fairs. They’ve been telling people for years that a great new contract is right around the corner. Watch what they do (sue & stonewall the pilots, violate the framework agreement as well as the current CBA) and not what they say (picture used car salesman trying to get you to sign up for in-house financing).

hi everyone
Quick question
Has anyone in this forum recently got hired by southern ?
How much hours they require ( Jet time and total )?
I am currently FO for skywest flying 175 but would love to fly B777.
Do I have any chance with 500 hours jet time ( total 2700 ) ?
Thanks in advance

Despite what some naysayers may post, you’ll never know unless you apply. What do you have lose, or better yet, what do you have to gain?

Give it a shot.

If you have a pulse they will hire you. They have hired several guys with mostly helicopter backgrounds to fly the 777, not saying that is a bad thing. They want you to be trainable.

I have been here less than six months. The bit of advice I will offer is to do your homework before you apply. A first year FO at Kalitta will make 140 in their first year. A 12 year CAPT here will make 150 (+/-).

I love the triple but make an informed decision. The crews you fly with are predominately fun people. The work rules are the sucky part. Also we will get a contract one day, I’ve heard people say by mid summer all the way to 2021, who knows. It is a good place to be if money and free time are not big issues to you. Just my nickel.

BF

Just remember that if you get hired by SAI you will be drinking from a fire hose during training. There is a lot to learn, and do you have the aptitude and attitude to survive?

There have been a number of people that have not made it through training. Though you might think that SAI is the fast track to you following your SJS dreams, evaluate yourself to see that your skill level is up to the task. Even thought you might be hired with such low time and experience, your success at SAI or any other airline for that matter is not a given. This is something that you will want to take into consideration for the whole of your aviation career.

Diesel8 gave solid advice. If you get hired at Southern, Atlas, Kalitta, etc for international ops you will be trained to act as PIC in cruise flight while the captain is in the bunk. If you don’t see yourself being able to step into that position and be able to obtain an Oceanic Clearance for the North Atlantic, determine if the ETOPS weather that Dispatch just sent is truly legal, figure out how to make HF position reports if the CPDLC/ADS is not working, or get an HF phone patch to Dispatch if ACARS/SATCOM is inop stay where you are to gain more experience and confidence. International Ops is the Adult leaugue. You will learn a ton but a ton is expected of you.

The above posts are all very good advice. At Atlas/Southern, the wheat is now being separated from the chaff in ground school, the sim, and in some cases on IOE, rather than by hiring only well qualified candidates. This "see how they shake out" mentality works out well if you're a strong stick/student but I had people in my class fail out in each of those segments of training. If you're hesitant about your ability, that 74/76/77 type is not worth a training failure on your record. My .02

Can you do the reverse of this? Interview with Southern and request Atlas?

Sounds like they've adopted the regional model of hire 'em all and let the training department sort it out.