Regionals to Majors movement
 

I am currently not employed by 121 airline. I don't have first hand knowledge about the movement from the regionals to the majors. My question is for current/recent regional pilots.

Question: Are you actually seeing your friends/co-workers being hired on by the majors? If so, generally what do their resumes look like (in terms of hours, ect..)

Bro fist- for the truth brother.

Facebiter is a highly qualified female FO with a good reputation.

Legacies: Captains with thousands of 121 PIC hours or well qualifed minority FO's.

LLC: Experienced FO's

Regionals: Anyone with a pulse and the minimums.

Are you kidding me? Outside of the, obvious females, I know of plenty of senior FO's with no prior TPIC (non minority btw) and CAs with, if I had to guess, 4-5k PIC leaving where I am at.

I know, personally, anyone over 10k TT is a huge negative to United (at the moment). A good CA, who I fly with regularly, was told this directly at a job fair recently. This is absolutely moronic considering all of these guys who were stuck at regionals at no fault of their own. Of course this being held as a negative, according to the algorithm all the legacies use (which is beyond stupid) will change at some point, but for the time being anyone with a crap load of time is at a disadvantage.

From everything I gather is if you have 7-10 internal LORs, between 5-7k TT and maybe a few hundred to 1500+ TPIC your chances are pretty decent your phone is going to be ringing. I read the United thread a lot (my number 1 choice) and it sounds like job fairs, while good, don't really help you in earning points per the algorithm they use.

I truly don't get it. Leave it to HR people who never deal with pilots to come up with a bunch of stupid idiotic BS to determine who is actually worthy of an interview. Why in the hell can we not go back to the days of "Hey Chief, heres a guys resume who is, safe, professional, works well with others and would be a great asset to XXX airline" is beyond me. Stop being so damn scared of discrimination lawsuits. Good lord.

Hang in there. Eventually the numbers equal out to everyone getting a job sooner than later.

I know a few Expressjet FO's with 2-3 years' experience who just got on with Allegiant. Not a huge jump but it's something.

As for females and minorities, why is that? Do airlines have some legal quota they have to meet? Who enforces it? If not, why do they do it?

Females make up 50% of the population, but significantly less of the pilot workforce. Probably <5%. Do these "discrimination" laws not consider that glaring discrepancy? I figure the amount of females hired only for their gender is negligible, so I'm not losing sleep over it, but if there is such a regulatory policy it ought to factor in the preexisting demographical makeup of a particular career field.

Since we're on the subject, I'll just share a story I heard a few weeks ago. Years and years ago, a pilot I flew with was trying to get on with United. At the time he happened to jump seat with a UAL crew, male Captain and recently hired female FO. They were discussing his efforts to get hired when the FO asked how many hours he had.

"5 or 6," he replies.

She answers, "Oh, you might need a little more. A CFI friend of mine just got hired and she has around 800."

The Captain shakes his head and says, "No, he means 5 or 6 thousand."

That's par for the course at UAL. Back in 1990 when I was getting out of the Navy, my stepfather (a UAL Capt.) hand carried my stuff into HR. With 5200 military hours, 2000 in C-9s they told him I was "overqualified."

Not necessarily true. There is no pilot shortage now, nor will there ever be. Just look at all the grey haired Eagle pilots strolling around DFW. If you don't think a regional gig could be your last stop on the pyramid, think again. There's a whole subculture of pilots out there in the world...Part 91, Part 135, Part 121 supplemental...virtually all of them are looking for a better gig.

In all seriousness, this is spot on.

15 years ago before 9/11 and all the majors we're in a hiring frenzy (like now),a female CFI colleague of mine had an AA capt for a father. She eventually got hired at a regional but we all thought it was just a matter of time before she'd get the call from American... never happened.

Haha you and me both broski!

And I know PERSONALLY that UAL newhire classes as of late have had an AVERAGE flight time of 10k. So for anyone that needs that unpacked for them, there were pilots in the class OVER 10k. One of the reasons it's NOT higher is that the pure mil demographics total time drives the mathmatical average lower. If you subtracted the pure mil numbers out, you'd be getting HIGHER than 10k in some classes.

Something about the recruiters at job fairs, SADLY you can't EVEN take their word as gospel at times.

The UAL head of hiring completely misspoke at one lately, and airlineapps had to send out a correction over what HE MEANT TO SAY.

DAL's guy misspoke as well.

US Airways system was by far the most fair. If you met their quals you were put into a pool and then numbers were randomly drawn out to pick those called.

UAL is still hiring females out of sequence, I've seen it first hand. There is a whole contingent of ladies over there that sued to pass the upgrade and when UAL conceded, they are paired with check airman for life. Sad but UAL upper, upper management doesn't care.

That being said, TT and years on the job doesn't make one more qualified over the other just like sex doesn't make one more qualified over the other.

Why do we have to keep rehashing this? Airlines call people for interviews based on a myriad of factors, some are under a pilot's control, some aren't. Some seem fair, some don't. Feedback would be nice, as the silence can be deafening when our phones don't ring, but life goes on. We all want to be in the first few classes, but there's only so many seats. It's important to remember that the retirements are just starting. Pretty soon, the yearly retirements will double and the cumulative retirements will out-number the total regional pilot count today. So far this year, close to 200 pilots have left the regional I work for. Scapegoating is easier than self-examination and uncertainty, but if you're bitter now, chances are you'll be bitter no matter where you work, plus your interview will be more challenging as you'll have to pretend that you're enjoyable to fly with.

UAL has a whole herd of permanent F/Os due to the EEO hiring requirements of the past. They're both male and female.

Considering the fact that UAL got torched by the EEOC back in the early '90s, you can understand why their HR is sensitive to the issue. Hey, life isn't fair. You have to play the cards you're dealt.

Ive been seeing alot of high time fo's with no pic time and captains with around 1000 pic time leave.

It's basically the same in reverse for male nurses. The guy has a much better chance to be hired all else equal, just to balance the numbers.

Really??? Since when are men ever in a category of needing EEO/government quota help? :confused:

so true;spot on

You've been seeing "alot"? Is she purty?:D

We had a 2 yr female fo leave RAH for UAL last month. Her reputation was, shall we say, not good.

Best.Post.Ever.

Because there are so many white males, lots of white males don't "make it", so they assume the reason they don't make it is because they are white males. If cockpits were made up of something other than predominately white males, this all might mean something...

Read it twice and still it doesn't make sense.:confused:

When 100% of females are being hired even with minimal experience and 80% of white males are "not making it," doesn't that seem a little discriminatory?

Not to james it doesn't. He's way too deep in his ideologies to argue with....

Talk to Angie at Cage Consulting. 100% of females are not getting hired. Appearances can be deceiving.

Or you could pull a Bruce Jenner and say that you identify as a woman. Worth a shot right? ;)

WAI - female hiring is twice the percentage of the population pool. If it's just about resumes would the percentage be 200% of expected?

That doesn't make sense.

Yes it does. If there are 20% female pilots and they make up 40% of major new hires, they are being hired at twice the rate or double or 200%

Much better explanation. There are three females in my class of 24 new hires, so that's roughly 10%. I don't know about other classes. I also don't know what the current percentage is in company but that's irrelevant anyways. Why should the current percentage stay the same? Perhaps more females are interested in getting hired as time goes on.

LOL! Common Core Math! Love it! :-)