AirBear

Congrats on getting hired at NJA. I've never heard of anyone getting the job with zero turbine time. Of course I've been gone for five years. My 2005 class had two 25 yr olds with only turboprop time and they were limited to the Citation Ultra.

v1rotatay

It's a thing now. There was a cfi in my indoc and a cape air pilot that got the gig.

And, they're starting a pathway program for certain universities grads, 0 turbine time.

HeavyD

Lucky us. Of course management doesn't have to fly with these 1000 hour wonders.

planejoe

So why is the company saying the quality level of candidates has drastically improved?

People fly RJs at 1000 hours all the time nowadays.

jtf560

Because those hired on at 1000 hours have just come out of very regimented programs and they haven't had time to develope bad habits or issues yet. Even when I had brand new 500 hour pilots in the right seat at the regional, they could all fly the airplane and train wonderfully- they have a very high pass rate for training. That said, the lack of real world experience with weather and at busy airports takes some extra attention for the PIC while they learn the ropes. At least they tend to learn fast and don't have a bunch of bad habits to break. I personally prefer pilots that do have a wealth of experience, but it isn't for me to decide and it will probably benefit me more that we have to hire these candidates and that many will probably end up bailing out relatively quickly for the airlines, leading to a better contract and more money for me sooner.

longtrip68

Rawhide16, this has been an interesting thread (read through the whole thing last night). Anyway, I’m currently at NJA as a relatively senior FO in my fleet and just wanted to provide two specific examples of work/QOL balance that I truly, truly enjoy. Btw I have no 121 experience, just military, 91 and Fractional.

First, as you know, NJA (and other fracs) offer homebasing. But more specifically we can change bases at any given time with only 7-days notice to the company. For example, I live and am based in the northeast, but this past winter I decided to spend the winter in Colorado to enjoy the ski/snowboard season, so I simply told the company I was changing my base to DEN until further notice and off I went. 4-day road trip out to Colorado and Airbnb’ed it while staying on the 7/7 schedule. When not flying I would get up each morning and head to the ski resort (Epic pass) during the weekdays (no crowds), and on the weekends I took up snowshoeing and took some backcountry Splitboarding classes. Then when it was time to go fly, it was an easy 1.3 hour drive to DEN, park the car at the Signature FBO (private terminal) and go enjoy some flying around the country. Return back to DEN 7 days later and repeat. By April I was ready to head back east, so I just changed my base back to the northeast. My point is, it is very easy to move around, explore different areas and activities without even taking vacation.

Another QOL example I enjoy is stringing together vacation, and utilizing Tour Slides and PTO to get long periods of time off. I know this is possible at a lot of places, but I just wanted to give an example: I finished up a trip from HOU to VNY on May 23, NJA flew me home and then my next “flight” - which happened to be AQP Recurrent - was not until August 3rd. May 23 to Aug 3. That was a combination of 3 weeks of vacation, a tour slide, 9 PTO days and normal time off. I just finished Recurrent, have one 7-day tour next week then go on another 3- weeks of vacation in September.

My point is, like at a lot of flying jobs, there is a great work/QOL balance here in my opinion. Other’s mileage may vary. It just seems that a lot of naysayers stick their noses up at having to spray and wipe a table, restock some Kind bars and M&M’s, and occasionally vacuum a carpet, and disregard some of the great things that are afforded.

Yes, we apparently work “harder” on the road than our 121 brothers and sister. But frankly, after 28-years in the military, this doesn’t seem like hard work at all! Everything is relative I guess . Anyway, I hope that helps you and maybe some others