High Flight is out of touch with current hiring policies. Leadership? No way. Here's how it goes today:

1. Who you know. If you have someone on the inside, especially if they're in the airline's management or training department, you're golden. Especially if you're the offspring of someone in those positions.

2. Community service. More and more as the HR departments take over, this is an important factor. God know why, but they're impressed with how much you "care" about your fellow man.

3. Check Airman/Standards IP. Military or civilian, makes no difference.

4. TPIC. The more the better.

5. Appearance. Some more than others. Make sure your interview suit is clean and you wear it properly. If you're not used to wearing a uniform, take a look at pictures of the airline you're applying to and try to look as much like they do as possible.

 

wonder if they see ALPA / union work (volunteering) as giving back... doubt it, but they should.

 

Absolutely not.

 

you seem to have a handle on it.. what about past involvement with a religious organization that donates time to charity... i.e. Knights of Columbus? Does it have to be current or can it be past?

 

I'd bet the more current the better, but it can't hurt to bring up past experiences.

 

just feels so fake to suddenly start serving at the soup kitchen just to apply for a job, know what I mean? spent years in KofC doing that stuff when I had the time to spare. Not that I"m looking for a job, just trying to apply my metric to the current hiring situation..

 

I don't know if you would consider it a "shortage", but there are signs...FedEx and SWA have had guys no show for class. UAL/AA, at least, are getting called ahead of time that guys are not accepting their class dates. UAL, at least, is having guys leave during ground school to go somewhere better.

Then, why are they setting up Flow Through agreements, if they are not have any trouble flying their passengers. UAL just set up a flow through with Commutair, who they do not own.

The LCCs ARE having trouble. This is why JetBlue has flow through with Cape Air, and why they recently started Ab-Initio training.

 

all this smacks of science fiction... never heard of any of it happening out there and I know people ALL OVER this industry. Some of the flow thru stuff has been around since well before any talk of shortage.. it's sensible and generally selective..

 

That ab-initio program has nothing to do with jetBlue's inability to staff jetBlue airplanes. It has EVERYTHING to do with Cape Air's inability to staff Cape Air airplanes.

I've never been able to figure out why jetBlue has their nose up Cape Air's derriere, but they have a long history of big-brothering Cape Air.

 

He's been talking about the mythical pilot shortage for years. He thinks just because some 777 operator in China is hiring typed FO's with 10K total time and 2K on type and paying them $120K a year the shortage is finally here. In my opinion the shortage is at least 3 years away. Ask me again in 3 years and I'll tell you the shortage is 5 years away.