How much is too much?
 

Hello all. I have heard thru the grapevine that many of the regionals do not really want “higher time” pilots. The reason that I have heard is that if they are high enough time they will leave as soon as a better carrier calls them and the regional wants them to work for at least a few years.

I guess my question is a two part question. Is this the case with the regionals and if it is, how much time is too much? The reason why I ask is that in the next year I will leave the military with about 4,500 TT / 2,000 PC, and my ATP. Knowing how competitive the majors are there is a strong possibility that I may not get a job there right away. I would of course want to keep flying and building towards that major airline seat at the regionals, but will I have “too much” time to get hired by them?

Cue the smarta**es who reply yet don't answer your question by saying "apply and find out"

When the floodgates open and the majors start hiring, the regionals will be SCRAMBLING to fill their classes. They aren't going to turn you down for being "over qualified".

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Combine the above with the FACT that regional airline management ONLY cares about the fire that's right in front of their face. In other words, filling the seats for the here and now.

We have recently hired pilots with much higher times than you have. I would not worry.

Depends on the airline. If they have a choice (ie enough bodies with ATP mins to fill the next class), some may prefer not to hire someone who is clearly major airline material.

In the case of SKW, we are crawling with ex-mil pilots, often retired O5/O6. They'll hire you, but will want to get some sense at the interview that you want to stick around at least for a while...for many that means roots in UT, ID, MT or even SOCAL, since a major airline newhire is almost certainly going to the east.

Your times are actually rather low son.

We (G7) have hired everyone from 1500- 20k. Recently, we have hired 25 year captains from Comair who were management pilots/ directors of training, etc. bottom line, at least here, there is no such thing as too much expirence. Getting people with different backgrounds and different amounts of flight time is fundamentally a good thing for everyone involved.

I imagine 4500 took a number of years to acquire in the military. Your time is sufficient to go straight to a legacy carrier. A regional is a waste of your time.

That said - no, your time isn't even close to too high. There really is no such thing as too much time.

If nothing else, regional carriers rely on attrition to keep labor costs lower.

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