Where in OZ do you live? My friends that fly for REX make heaps more than us at the regional levels here in the USA. However While their income is more than double mine, they are all based and live in SYD. The cost of living there vs the cost of living for me in the South Western USA is insane!

All the info has been worth it
 

To all of the posters who managed to tell me that I'm not competitive without a college degree in a normal manner, thankyou, that's the kind of information I was looking for. Silly comments & pictures in reply posts aren't really called for (& disappointing if coming from professionals).

For those asking where I work, it's in PNG. If you're unsure where that is, google it.
Why do I want to leave, well, anyone who's spent any considerable amount of time in a 3rd world country without being part of the military or diplomatic corp will understand why. Like most people, I want to move on career wise to something bigger & better.

Enjoy.

Ausflyer,

For what its worth, I too am an ozzie and live in the US. I have a green card, an FAA ATP and 13500 hours, nearly all jet and almost 5000 PIC wide body command. I have flown for respected major carriers and legacy airlines.

I have had ZERO success in obtaining a job in the US. NOTHING.

I don't have a college degree and I don't even get a reply from Spirit, Virgin, Jetblue etc except for the automated email reply.

I have virtually given up, I don't know how folks get jobs here without someone recommending you but at this stage I will just stick to contract flying in Asia Pacific but the commute is killing me!!!!

Good luck cobber.

By getting your degree...! You can have letters of recommendation from Yeager, Sollenberger and entire Red Bull air racing team, but without a degree you are simply out of the competition.

This is simply not true. Plenty people working at majors and LCC's without degree. Why limit yourself though and make it that much harder.

Sure....., hired back in the day, but lately?? It is an uphill battle for sure. Don't get me wrong, I'm one that thinks it is just a stupid requirement, I haven't used the knowledge acquired in my degree in this career at all....! To require a degree even if it is completely unrelated seems moronic at best..., the fact still remains that without a degree your chances to land a job at the majors is virtually impossible.

If you are a current ATP holder, few thousand hours, clean record, I give it less than 3-5 years for everyone to be able to get on with whatever major they want. That is unless WW III starts before that. If you, like me, are an 80s baby the degree doesn't mean a thing. It only shows you been partying for 5 years and had enough money to burn. I learn more from reading the Economist and Foreign Affairs on my 4-day trips.

I don't know about 'back in the day', but in the mid-80s when I was hired at EAL, my entire class had degrees. Probably 60% were ex-mil which made the degree a foregone conclusion. Hiring back then was heavily ex-mil and thus had degrees. When UA and AA off the street guys to be trained to be pilots in the 60s, the going in condition was a degree.

I doubt the 4-year degree will ever disappear as a basic requirement. I know loads of pilots without degrees that never got a call by a major or a legacy.

303flyboy

Dream on, why do you say that? And don't give me the "retirement curve" shortage theory. I've watched and been active in this industry for almost 50 years, never have I seen, despite many predictions, a shortage.

GF

“You can have letters of recommendation from Yeager, Sollenberger and entire Red Bull air racing team”

That’s funny, I was just having coffee with Chuck, Sully and Hans from Red Bull and they all aid the same thing.

All kidding aside, I have considered a degree but I really don’t know I could cope with work and study together. My commute to work is 10 hours followed by long haul night patterns and my brain hurts just thinking about study . . . .

Do the airlines prefer certain types of degree?

Also, I get a lot of conflicting information. The Virgin recruiter at the job fair in LAS (now there’s an interesting experience) was sure I could get hired without a degree but when I check the feedback from those joining Virgin from the website feed I notice they all have been to university!

And most have internal recs too. Trouble is, I don’t know a single airline pilot working here in the US except for the nice folk I chat to during my commute.

I need to frequent pilot bars more often.

The college degree doesn't prove a pilot's abilities. All it does is makes HR's job easier to sort thru the applicants.
Instead of having a pile of applicants 6ft high, they add a degree requirement & the pile is only 2ft high.
QF in Australia use to require very difficult high school subjects. No other airline did, why, cause (rightly or wrongly) most people wanted to work for QF. They just needed a way of culling applicants easily.

Thanks for the feedback fellas, it's a shame it's taken 4 pages of dribble & smart ass comments to get this far but it's all good stuff.