Hi all,

A question for those of you who may have lived, worked and flown abroad, be it in Europe or the ME or Asia / anywhere else, who have successfully returned and gained employment in the US, especially with a major airline, have you had any issues or challenges during the transition?

Any issues with paper work? Background checks? Logbooks? PRIA requests or anything else that may have had an adverse affect on the process / transition?

I am applying to return home after some years and am curious what challenges or issues I can expect, if any, during a potential interview/hiring/application process.

Appreciate any insight. Cheers!

Foreign carriers don’t necessarily play with PRIA. Not usually an issue from what I’ve seen.

Ten+ years ago it could be a problem, I knew (ex-mil) people who wanted to come back but couldn't get a call from a major. A couple of them worked around that by just coming home, then they were able to get noticed, attend interviews, etc.

My understanding now is that it's not an issue today, as tnkrdrvr said.

From previous experience, the us airlines send the pria paperwork request to the foreign air carrier and after 30 days of no answer, they can use the good faith exemption!

Thank you for your replies and info.

Does anyone maybe know how or where the airlines send their PRIA requests to? Is it via mail, or email, do they contact the contact in your app?

Who may expect to receive the request with your current employer? Anyone familiar with that?

You would write down your company address, and that’s where they send the request, which either they may or not answer back, since they’re not obligated to, or due to privacy legalities!

I was overseas for a decade and had absolutely no issues(PRIA, logbook included) getting hired.

Came back from the sandbox a few years ago. Your hiring carrier will know they won’t get anything back. As described to me they send the forms by mail, wait 30 days, then try again, then fill out a form (a formality) for as what was referenced earlier a “good faith exemption”. No issues other than it might take a bit longer for the PRIA file in the HR dept to be officially closed.

My experience was, it went to the company address. The receiving dept, not knowing English, sent it to the FOM. FOM, calls me and asks “what’s this?” then forwards it to the training dept. Training dept says “we have not time” and trashes it. YMMV!

I can tell you that every single pilot that was working on contract in Japan for the past 14 years have returned successfully to the US market. Majors, Freight, ACMI. They have been hired all over.