Will Ameriflight hire pilots with only high school diplomas that are only 19 to 20 years old?

Uhhhhhh, what?

Will Ameriflight hire younger pilots with only high school diplomas?

If you are qualified yes. Can you fog a mirror? You're in...

I hope that's not the case. Single pilot IFR can be very challenging & sometimes dangerous. It isn't for everybody, even if they do meet the minimum requirements.

If you meet 135 minimums, your age and education are not a restriction. I recall one pilot who hired on, moved up and was typed in an E120 before he was old enough to get an ATP.

If you can fog a mirror and meet the mins, you're in for an interview. The chances of anyone passing training at AMF is around 50%.

Be hot on your basic pilot nav IFR skills. I've had trainees who could do GPS routes and then vectors to ILS but start doing rapid fire pilot nav approaches without GPS and radar coverage and they just fall apart.


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"Chances" are a lot better if you come in with a good IFR scan and have your flows down before the first sim.

I'm just gonna throw out a recommendation. MS flight simulator is 10 bucks for an old version, another 15 for a joystick. Have your buddy sit next to you and watch you to make sure you are up to PTS standards and that you're doing it all by the book.

I like the SBA ILS for practice, no vectors just keep switching frequencies.

have your flows down

yeah have your "flows" down aka memorize the entire checklist verbatim. and whobetide you if you say LIGHTS ON INSTEAD OF LIGHTS SET. literally the worst traning ive ever seen. they BRAGGED about their 40 percent failure rate. which is probably worse than that. go anywhere else but here if you value your tickets and pria.

It's a training Dept full of ERAU super heros that get those cultural marching orders from above. To be fair the 121 world will correct you on improper callout verbiage too

You're both a couple of years out of date on your info. These days we don't have the luxury of failing someone for a bad call out (unless it continues and continues and continues... You get the picture.)

We still seem to have a pretty high wash out rate but most of them are pilots who just can't fly basic instruments or . We have been working to counter that by paying for a week of refresher instrument training for everyone prior to Indoc.

It's pretty hard to get blown out of training at this point, but it's a lot less painful for yourself and the training department if you just come prepared and knowledgable. You are responsible for all the knowledge and skills required to obtain all the ratings on your certificate, whether you are at AMF, a 121, or a part 91 gig. If you are only as good as the piece of plastic in your wallet says you are, and have a good attitude and study habits, you will have absolutely no problems. But if during online training I have to explain the fundamentals of how to fly a charted DME arc or how to not wind up 1000 feet high at the MAP, you might not make it, because you didn't know the basic knowledge that your ticket says you should.


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Before you judge others, make sure you are perfect. (Especially on a public forum)

Ameriflight
 

Never said I was perfect. All I said is to be successful do your due diligence to make sure you are up to PTS standards if you want to be successful at AMF. No more, no less. Are you insinuating those standards are just too high? If insisting on PTS performance makes me seem holier than thou, so be it.


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Good post.

There seems to be an assertion that the training department wants you to fail, or that you are somehow rolling the dice by going into AMF training. Completely false. I absolutely agree, training will be so much easier if you come prepared.

If you get on the back side of the curve, keep your head up, keep progressing, don't destabilize the plane trying to get back to where you should be.

And that week of refresher time is done at US Aviation Academy for those that are curious.

This sentence right here is exactly what I am talking about when I say cultural marching orders from above. I know who you got that from lol.

Having fundamentals and basics are one thing. To be given obscure sim profiles in which you already will have degraded SA, and holding people to high standards only to criticize their every error is a ridiculous environment IMO. Single pilot IFR ain't for everyone, but the washout rate at AMF even still, would indicate that half of the pilots in the U.S. cannot fly on instruments, yet CRJs aren't having instrument proficiency related accidents. Thats where the washouts from AMF are going, and passing. Ironically, I know a guy who washed out of training at a regional, and passed training at AMF...

Ameriflight
 

Yea, I've heard some horror stories of "back in the day", and I have absolutely no doubt they were true, because there are pricks in every line of work. I can only guess that it was because they could; for every position they had a bunch of applicants. Anymore, we need pilots, and we can't afford for people to drop from training. Thats why you go to instrument school at an independent flight school before you go to indoc, we want you to succeed. The failures I've had during line training were folks who we gave almost 4 weeks of in-aircraft training to (over 50 hours of hands on flying the line/offline flights from the left seat), and they were still making mistakes that, had I not intervened, would have resulted in a crash. (i.e. Flying a flagged glide slope, spinning the wrong radial in FAF inbound etc. not some silly procedural crap like "lights on" vs "lights set") I'm a pilot, not a management cool-aid drinker, and it really sucks to wash a fellow aviator. But I can't sign someone off for a checkride when they are routinely making fatal errors. Be ready, know your stuff, study hard, and be prepared to fly the plane from the left seat with no help from me.


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+1

The trainees I had in the BE99 that didn't make it were given 3 or 4 weeks of line training, a few offline flights and would have killed us a few times. People weren't sent home for not having textbook callouts - it was basic airmanship and instrument skills that were severely lacking and couldn't be taught well at all during line training. When the focus is how to fly X airplane the way X wants it to be flown and how to deal with the customer service aspects as well, there is no time to focus on basic IFR concepts.

Ameriflight
 

On my run we get an offline every day, with at least 2 extra approaches. On average we log 7-9 hours a week flying offline training, with no customer imposed stress. I generally sit there and let them take all the time they need to set up properly, brief departures and approaches on the ground etc. Still, the plane is a lot faster than a 172 even with the torque pulled way back, and some people just can't stay in front of the airplane. But if you are considering AMF and reading this thread, AMF has gotten much more friendly in the last few years. Still challenging flying, but we try to stack the deck in your favor. FWIW...


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Couldn't disagree with anything you guys said. Of those I trained, I probably recommended 60% for a check ride. Not everyone can do that job, and not everyone can learn in the time frame that AMF allowed. Hearing about the extra training is great.

Just don't risk your PRIA. The AMF fail rate is 50-60%. If you want to risk your future in a cheap company with cheap planes and cheap sims, you are welcome to do so. But if you have plans to be a professional in 10 years with a good salary just stay away from AMF.

Just wait
 

if you are at 1200 and your goal is to fly for the airlines, just WAIT the last few hours you have to build to get 1500.

life at ameriflight:
"you're home every night" - you actually start work anywhere from 5-7am and don't get home again usually till 7-8pm. just enough time for dinner and sleep. So how much were you REALLY home?? I will admit the weekends off is probably the best part of the whole gig. compared to a regional, I've been home a lot more (actually home during normal hours) than I ever was at ameriflight. Of course, gone a few weekends here and there but if your goal is a major airline, that's unavoidable in the long run.
ALSO. ameriflight life gets boring. it's really repetitive since you fly to the same city or two EVERY DAY. while doing so you spend way too much time at an outstation and get very little flight time.
At a regional you will not serve the same destination every day. yes, there are the more frequented destinations, but it will not get old nearly as fast as ameriflight will! you will also stay at nicer accomedations than ameriflight puts you at.

Benefits:
for this I will focus on flight benefits.
Now I understand not all pilots got into the profession due to free (and reduced) flights, but for others it is a big deciding factor.
while at Amerifight we were allowed jumpseat on Southwest. (I hear that now it includes ups, seabourne, mokulele, and spirit?). Anyways the point is, if you're married or have kids, WHO CARES who YOU can fly on, ameriflight does not and cannot get benefits for your wife/husband and kids. so sure, YOU flew for free (domestic only! so all your international plans are non existent!) but what about your family? also with a mon-fri when are you even supposed to fly? Friday night to Sunday?? what about longer trips?
at regionals I as well as my wife and Family ALL have benefits. we can ALL go and enjoy our domestic AND international benefits. that's not to say you might not still buy a ticket here and there like during holidays when non rev travel is nearly impossible (but not fully. I still managed to make 3 domestic trips last thanksgiving/Christmas season).

Training:
let's face it, ameriflight training is a "train yourself" type of thing. you show up to indoc and it's a week of cover everything in no particular order and don't bother asking what's on the test. they don't prep you, you prep you. I know that people these days see that as a problem but it's time for them to face it. things are never going to go back to "the good old days" when you can give young adults a book and they take care of it. these days it's the airlines job to train new hires and that's the way it's going to be. if ameriflight wants to keep talking about the past and how much better it used to be, they need to suck it up because it's not ever going back to those days. Now it's the airlines job to adjust to the decrease in performance of applying applicants. adjust their training even if it ends up taking longer to get them to standards they should be at. The new pilots will not adjust to the airlines anymore. so either pick out the few that are still like "the good old days" and keep quiet about how you can't find enough qualified/quality pilots to fill vacancies, or adjust the training schedule. It is not, unfortunately, going back to the old
days. it's time to adjust.
ameriflight just doesn't have the training department they think they do.
Regionals will have a longer training period than ameriflight (amf is usually 3-5 weeks depending on the plane). A regional will spend a week on indoc, and up to 3 weeks on systems! then up to 3 weeks on sim! this is why regional training was so easy! sure it's baby steps but it's paid better and who cares? at least you know you can pass. Also at ameriflight you hear more profanity and not work appropriate jokes than at a regional. we all do it, but regionals are more professional about it and keep it entirely out of the training environment. for comparison sake, training at ameriflight felt like going through a California public school and going through a regional is like showing up to your 400 level college course (as far as professionalism and materials to use. this does not reflect the material as far as easy or not).

pretty much think about it. is instructing really THAT BAD that you can't hold off another 300 hours? or even another 700 for those going for emb fo?? depends where you instruct, 700 isn't even another year! and 300 is only 3-4 months?
also think about it this way. should another tragedy to aviation occur, would you rather be stuck at amf for the next 8-10 years while the industry isn't hiring, or would you rather be stuck at a regional where you will eventually (not year 1 or 2, but later) make noticeably more money and have a better quality of life?

that's my 2 cents. knowing what I know now, would I have spent a year at ameriflight? simple...no. it's even been a while since I've been there and I still try and save younger pilots from making that mistake.

Good post. I can't argue with much of that. Though I could care less if people cuss and don't act politically correct. I myself weighed whether to go to a regional or do AMF for a year. What cinched it for me was a first year W2 at Skywest etc is simply not livable for me, as I have a wife and 3 kids. At least here I can get off food stamps. This industry is incredibly volatile; even if you get hired at a "good" regional prospects can change quickly. At AMF you will get turbine PIC early in your career, and there are lots of AMF alumni well placed in the industry who look favorably on being the kind of person who can self motivate, get through training, and then fly safely in the kind of environments we fly in. I don't personally know anyone who has gone directly to a major/legacy, but In the last 6 months out of my base we had one guy leave to fly a G450, another a Hawker 800, and yet another to king air charter work.

In the end we all roll the dice, pick a path, and in 10 or 15 see if it worked out better than what the other guy choose. There are no good entry level jobs, they all suck one way or another.


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I'm glad this is a shorter post than your other rant against AMF. But still no more informative.

It's pretty accurate though.

Wow Cheerleader. One single post. HMMMMMMMM.

Or, to put it another way;

Would you rather be at AMF where you would still have a job and are still building flight time or would you rather be looking for a job at McD's while you wait to get called back from furlough? (AMF has never furloughed a pilot in their almost 50 year history.)

Ameriflight
 

Yea, I hear those guys at Eagle were really happy about their increasing quality of life during the economic downturn. There are no good entry level jobs, pick your poison and hope you made the right choice that allows you to move on sooner rather than later. Talking to my regional I don't think they have it any better than us AMFers do...



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That is 100% incorrect. In 2011 they furloughed a class (recalled 6 days later) and pilots were furloughed from HWD last year.

Next time, talk to guys who don't commute to work.

Depends which regional you go to. I hear SkyWest has never furloughed either.
Also the other problem comes that majors want 121 time these days and are doing away with pic time. so another advantage of going to a regional is you get that experience where as most amf pilots end up at a regional anyway.
AMF single pilot makes you a better pilot, but it's also an added step in getting on with a major (certain majors) since all legacy carriers still prefer 121 time. if your final goal is alligent/spirit then sure, amf isn't delaying you any.

Honest question here, what is the source for this? Try as I might I've never seen anybody say they specifically value 121 time over other types. Don't majors take fractional and Pt91 captains fairly regularly too? Cargo beats the PIC drum, Regionals and flight schools preach 121 and flow agreements. Both sides have a financial stake in getting a young pilot to see things their way. Any idea of where to find an unbiased source?


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my source is just from asking regional captains that recently went to classes at Delta, United, and American "where have the new hires come from" and they said at their classes about 90-95% are from regionals or other scheduled passenger airlines Or LARGE cargo carriers like ups and FedEx. those who aren't any of this are from military usually. For sure I haven't heard one tell me that they ran into ameriflight pilots that were direct hires and from my time at amf I also don't know a single one (personally) to have in recent years (last 10) made it to anywhere (major airline based) other than alligent. You hear people at amf say "well there was this one guy" but when asked for detail, no one seems to know who that "one guy" was.
so my source is asking pilots that I personally know to have been recently hired at legacy carriers and also pilots I know from amf and where they are now. a majority jump ship to a regional. Also once at a jump seat on delta I saw a newspaper of theirs saying were their most recent new hires came from and it pretty much listed all regionals, military and things like frontier, spirit, virgin America, ups, FedEx. the portion that said "other"' was only at 3% I believe.. don't 100% remember but it was really low.

I can give you two reasons why that is.

First, AMF is such a small part of the pool of pilots compared to the regionals that looking at it from the airline side they are bound to be a small number.

Second, the perception that we are discussing is CAUSING so many guys that start at AMF to leave quickly to go to the regionals to get the 121 time that they never get to the flight time level to be competitive at the majors like they did over 10 years ago.

And I do personally know of about a dozen who went to large airlines direct from AMF. But, as you say, that was back a little over 10 years ago when the hiring first started back up post 9/11. And guys were leaving AMF at 4-5000 hours total time.

Everyone wants to talk about guys who left AMF directly to a major, but they forget to add they were prior military and needed currency lol.

I will say that a lot of runs aren't great time builders, at around 2 hours of block a day. If it was regional or 350 hours a year of metro time, I would choose the regional. I'm at about 7-800 a year on my current run, there are some runs that do more than that. I want my 1000 TPIC so I'll get that just over a year in. AMF for 10 years? Kill me now. Get in, get your time, and move on.


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Anyone who has been at AMF for a decade or more and isn't in top management, really doesn't understand the industry in which they spent 100,000 grand to be a part of.