Regionals (the early days)
 

Does anyone remember how easy it was to get a job at a Regional back in the late 1990's and the early 2000's? So many new regional companies hiring pilots right out of flight schools with 250 hours total time. Remember how proud those pilots were to get a job at an airline? Pilots commercial check ride was harder than the training they received at these airlines.
Look at the difference today. When I see a post from someone that is minimalizing the qualifications of a new hire today it makes me wonder ***. The hiring practices of Mesa, PSA, Piedmont, or Silver are no different from how some of these early regional pilots were hired. Difference is that the new hires today come with more flight time and more experience.
So, if you are a recruit, new hire or contemplating the industry don't let these morons diminish what you have had to accomplish to get an interview or a job. They had it much easier back in the day.

And on the flip side of that, when I graduated college in 1994, no regional would even talk to you for the right seat in a Metro, Bandit, or SF340 unless you had a bare minimum of 3000 TT, 500 ME, preferably with at least 100 turbine. Competitive mins were more like 4000TT/1000ME/200 turbine.

Even getting a job at Amflight on the Piper Lance required ATP mins if I remember correctly.

How times change.

Yeah I remember alright. All you had to do back then was write a check for $10,000 to Comair, ACA, Express 1, or any of the other PFT airlines and you were as good as hired. Yeah those were the days.. :rolleyes:

No, it was not easy to get a job back in the early 2000's.

I graduated in 2003, pretty much no one was hiring, even flight schools.

I was lucky to land a CFI gig after moving 1000 miles. The chief flight instructor had a class date at ExpressJet on 9/11/01. Needless to say, he was still instructing/flying charter years later.

New hires back then were basically like they were now - lots had 135 experience, heck even Republic/Chautauqua wouldn't even look at you unless you had night freight time. I applied there multiple times with folks walking my resume in and no dice. Everyone I know hired there was either former Airnet, Ram Air, Ameriflight, or Flight Express.

Now, late 2004 to 2008, yes it was easy to get a job. Lots of scope relief from the legacies meant lots of new jets coming on property. Pretty much the glory years. 2008 financial crisis and age 65 but a big fat stop to that.

People with poor backgrounds are getting tossed in the right seat of an 85,000lb jet, potentially a guy who was CFI'ing 18 months ago as his Captain.

Nothing to see here, move along. Safety first.

Eagle was 1500/300 to get hired in 1999.

Those were not a requirement just preferred.

OP obviously wasn't around back then. In 98-99' the only way you were getting hired at a regional with less than 1200 hours was to write a $8-12K check. I was one of the low time guys at SkyWest with 1200/350 multi when hired in early 2000 and was given **** about it by more than a few of the pilots that had been hired years before. I was even surprised to get hired with that low of time as I'd worked with plenty of others that had way more than that and couldn't get interviews.

Eagle, ACA, Comair, ASA.. all had minimums of at least 1200/200. Most wanted over 1500tt.

Mid 90s you needed 2500tt/500multi with 135 experience for most places. And that was to sit right seat of a Metro, Brasilia, J31/32, of SF340.

And your comment about training -- SkyWest consistently washed out 10% of the new hire class.

That is accurate. There was a brief hiring spurt around 2000/2001 right before 9/11 and again in the mid 2000s. They were brief rays of sunshine in an otherwise horrible decade. Anyone pining for the good ol' days right after 9/11 obviously wasn't there during those dark years. Some guys are frustrated because they have to have an ATP now but once you've got it you can have your pick of regionals to work for. Not to get in to a "back in my day" sermon but in those days you took whatever 121 job you could get even if it was on the other side of the country. There was no picking and choosing and comparison shopping which regional to work for like there is now. It was a completely different environment and I don't think most of the pilots under 30 really understand how good they have it. What I wouldn't give to be a fresh 25 year old ATP again in this job market.

And starting pay was something like $15-18 an hour, after you paid for training...

Well if you're gonna go there then remember when pilots could upgrade at a regional in 1-3 years and not be stuck for 6-8+ as regional FOs that were hired in 2007-2010?

No kidding. Boo-hoo I have to get an ATP in order to get hired. :(

A lot of guys today wouldn't have the dedication to sling it out in the 90's -- spending years teaching people how to fly, flying checks in clapped out Apache's in any type of weather, only to hit a brick wall when the airlines you'd hoped to work for suddenly required you to write a check for $12,000 to get hired in the right seat of a Metro. All this for $17,000/year.

My heart bleeds.

^^^ This ^^^

And I thought I got real lucky. SkyWest just had raised it from $17 to $19 an hour. And I got paid during training as well as a paid for hotel room. Previously you only got something like $600 after training was finished. A lot of places didn't provide a hotel. I think first year pay stayed at $19 for another 12 years.

Upgrades were around two years. Four+ years were nearly unheard of.

Not saying that everything used to be peachy, but after a bunch of guys I've met complained about making $18/hour in the 90's, I did the inflation math and found out that was really $28/hour.

Most everyone will agree that flight training was substantially cheaper back in the day, and all those jobs flying checks around are practically non-existent now. I'd rather have done that than instructed.

I don't mind all this. If others are willing to overcome the barriers that slowly and surely have been added over the years, then welcome aboard. If not, good, you should only be here if you really want to be. I've met many people who chose majors and careers for the paycheck and didn't know the first thing about them going in. I don't want to fly with someone like that.

With these added barriers to entry, I've got a feeling that 20 years from now pilots won't be a dime a dozen, nor will they be treated that way. Fine with me.

Now please correct me if I am wrong, but isn't this proof that there isn't a pay shortage like ALPA says there is? I mean most of everybody says that regionals were hiring with 1,000+ hours back then, all for an $19,000 a year job. Yet, there were tons of pilots flocking for those jobs back then. So....is there something I am missing?

and they stuck to the preferred.

lets see 19-20,000 a year 20 years ago versus the 19-23,000 per year 20 years later. accounting and economics was not required at you flight school college was it. Oh, yes, mainline first year was 23-25,000 per year then and then mainline pilots voted in B scale whch lasted for the next 15 years.

In your opinion, the added barriers of entry do not require an added increase in pay?

Back then, regional pilots dressed professionally. There were no "Chad's".

Of course they should, and economics will dictate that happens eventually.

You are incorrect. I just looked back and it was a requirement to have 1500/300, not preferred. Starting pay was 18.61/hour with a 72 hour guarantee.

In 2001, it dropped to 1000/100.

Have you even talked to guys who were hired then? Clearly you are not familiar with this industry's history. Nothing from this post is close to the truth. If you meet or are close to the minimum requirements you could pretty much pick where you wanted to work.

I was not flying in the 90s but I know people who have and the only issue I have with this total time required back then compared to now is the opportunities available. In the time it takes to get 1500 hours today for the average pilot, they probably could have got 3000hrs in the same time. Other than pilot mill CFI jobs, entry level pt. 91 and 135 gigs are getting harder and harder to find these days. Aviation is about luck and timing. These days it's more luck than anything else. Good luck finding a kid with 500hrs multi these days.

Oh shoot, I forgot to carry the one in my inflation calculations. My bad!

No not easy at all! You had to have 1500+, several hundred ME, and internal references.

The training was harder, but not in a good way...often you had to memorize vast amounts of trivial knowledge which was utterly irrelevant to actually flying the plane (I can still tell you how many ounces of water the galley sink water tank on a CRJ-200 contains :rolleyes: ).

Checkrides included NDB approaches, which you hoped to God you never had to do in a turbojet without GPS or RNAV, and were PC format instead of AQP LOFT scenario. Wash rate was at least 10%, up to as much as 50% in some programs.

Training is much better today, and has gotten easier (in a good way) by making it more line-oriented and eliminating superfluous BS...that mainly served to make training dept. loosers feel good about themselves at your expense.

I think the difference is that nobody expected to spend 8--10 years at the regionals. I knew a bunch of guys who got hired at the regionals back in the 90s and they all upgraded within a couple years and got to the majors maybe 5 years later.

Then 9/11 happened...

Joe Merchant did that at ASA back then.

love the talk of the good old days being late 90's early 2000's lol good god im getting old lol my certificate numbers still my SSN # lol

In my day... they paid in peanuts and bananas. They said... "Jump through the flaming hoop"! "Jump"!

Monkey see, monkey do. So I got paid the big bucks. On special occasions, I managed to get the banana split. What can I say... nuts and bananas on one plate. If I have an especially good performance, maybe they will let me out of my cage for lunch.


Next year.... I'll get on with a major....

Took me 1750 TT and 350 multi with a couple recs to get me the call from Pinnacle in 2003. I was the lowest time interviewee in my class...

Yeah, those were the easy days!

Heck, when I learned to fly:

• GPS did not exist

• Class B was a TCA, Class C was an ARSA, Class D was an ATA (I think)

• A 'fancy' panel meant you had 2 navcomms instead of just one. If you had DME, you were some sort of sky god.

• Written tests were...actually written tests, not computerized tests.

• Sometimes you'd actually drive over to the FSS to get an in-person weather briefing

• The hardest part about departing IFR from an uncontrolled field without a decent RCO was the sprint from the payphone (after you'd been given your clearance and void time from FSS) to the aircraft, and then the quick startup and 40-knot taxi to the runway, just so you could make your void time. True story: once at a airport without a working payphone, the guy on the field drove me to his house so we could call FSS and ask for a 15-minute void time, which they gave us.

• Most of the instructors remembered flying the old 4-course radio ranges

• Flying an NDB approach was just something you did every day

And so on, and so forth...

Sounds familiar, in 78', just before the "Great pilot shortage".

$600 a month and all the flying that they could shove up your arse. No per diem, no FAA over site, no adherence to flight time/duty time regulations (try 10 or more days in a row, 120 of actual time a month). Overnights two to a room, 4 if it had twin beds. Maybe in a firehouse, or adjacent to an overnight maintenance hanger.

"• Flying an NDB approach was just something you did every day"

The "hub" had a localizer, no DME.

The F/O station had a "repeater" from the captains side.

You are all a bunch of whiners.

Back in my day, we had to fly uphill to work, in the winter, carrying 50 lbs of Jepp charts, using NDB's, down to minimums. Both ways.

ah, the good old days where war stories were war stories.

And you paid the company for the privilege!

Funny how Bedford n pals mysteriously forget that. The new ATP law is problem of course....couldn't possibly be the regional whipsaw that is the problem. No way, not possible.

I know, right?

Did some of my primary training with a gentleman who was the quietest, most humble and retiring guy you'd ever meet. Never talked much about his earlier life. Years later I found out that he had 7 or 8 kills over Western Europe as a P-47 pilot, and I believe he had spent time as a POW.

I wonder if we will see a generation like his again.

No.

Every person I've met who definitely has bragging rights, doesn't brag. They are all old school guys. One guy I flew with (Part 91) was a U-2 pilot and was getting qualified in the SR-71 program before it got cancelled. I had to drag that information out of him. There's no way I'd be able to keep that inside if I had those kind of credentials.

His humility was remarkable.

Yeah, I've learned that the folks who instantly volunteer to tell you about their combat experiences...are usually the guys who never got anywhere near the action.

One of my best private-pilot students was a medical doctor. Very quiet, polite, soft-spoken. If you met him, you'd instantly peg him as an accountant. I knew him for about three years before I managed to find out that he had served multiple tours as an Army Ranger and had fought in the Mogadishu battle depicted in 'Black Hawk Down.' I only got this out of him after a large number of beers, and even then he refused to say anything other than that he had been there and he lost some buddies.

My wife's dad served as a Marine infantry lieutenant in I Corps, 1966-67. To this day he refuses to say anything about the experience, even to his own wife, other than his rank, dates of service, and the fact that he did see combat.

And yet, as a nation, we glamorize and celebrate pop stars, rather than the people who fight and die to keep us safe.

To keep this aviation-related...I learned that SkyWest started with a couple of Cherokees. Who knew?