So a felon cant legitimately honestly train and get rated and be allowed to fly for an airline?
Its a blue collar job inspite of the uniform. I for on eknow there are thousands of A&p felons at majors.
Do you know if airlines have a policy that says 'we will not hire felons' as pilots?

 

Wow...dredging up a post that is almost 2 years old just to make some ridiculous comments. Good use of your time.

 

Why? You want them to keep felon-ing instead of building a legit life?

 

I think he might be asking a question there chief.

 

No major airline is going to intentionally hire someone with a felony conviction. It is possible to get a ATP with a felony conviction but it will require a explanation. Some felonies are permanently disqualifying.
I have no idea what your blue collar comment is about. Are you saying blue collar workers can have felonies so airline pilots should be the same?

 

John Perrys has entered the chat...

 

those same A&P’s don’t have to go to Canada or other countries where they have different laws for who can operate an aircraft. You can’t even be a FA and work a flight to Canada.. yeah, felons shouldn’t be allowed to hold certain jobs… they can’t even work the front desk at a gym because they deal with people’s personal information. So operating an aircraft? You give up certain privileges if you’re a convicted felon. There’s consequences to your actions.

 

So...uh... what did "your friend" do time for?

 

You can train and get rated for up to CPL.

For the atp, there's a nebulous "Good Moral Character" regulatory requirement, which might be a hangup depending on how many and how bad the crimes were.

But you'd also have to get an FAA medical, and they can and do deny that based on anti-social personality disorder if you have significant criminal history.

To even be eligible to work at essentially all airlines you need a SIDA clearance... that comes with it's own list of disqualifying crimes. Those are hard and fast, not waiverable to my knowledge, although for many of them the limitation only applies for 5 or 7 years after you finished your sentence.

After all of that the airlines, like any large employer, will conduct their own background checks and make an informed decision. Pretty much all felonies are a no-go, although a few people have gotten through with a DUI many years prior. You might possibly slip through with something like drugs or theft that happened when you were very young, if your life trajectory has obviously been on a great path for many years. Violent crimes are probably a no-go for life (assuming the airline finds out).

Ok so you got that far, one last hurdle: Canada. Almost all US airlines fly to Canada and you cannot go there if you have any felony record (including any DUI which is a felony up there). Only way around that is a diplomatic process to get a sort of waiver. That's commonly granted for DUI's but only after a certain number of years have passed. I don't know how they might feel about non-DUI felonies. There might still be one or two small US regionals which don't fly up North, so they might not care about Canada.

 

I can think of a big U.S. regional that doesn’t fly to Canada……Southwest!