Skywest Career Advancement ?'s
 

Hello Everyone,

I am a current student at a flight school that is associated with Skywest and have a quick question before joining the Skywest Cadet Program. I have noticed that Skywest does not offer any type of career advancement opportunities like most other regionals do. Does the lack of these programs hurt advancement opportunities for Skywest pilots or is it possible to make it to a legacy carrier without them? I have a degree with a 3.5 GPA in a non-aviation field so I can check the degree box.


Thank you for all of your help, It is greatly appreciated.

We have a “guaranteed resume review” program at DL and UA... ha.ha LoL. Not sure the numbers on it yet... But why lock your self into one major.. We have people go all over the place 60 pilots a month leave on average.. or you can go to a Compass for the 2 a month flow (thats not happening right now) to frontier.... pick your poison. And pain while you commute across the country for a “hope” of a flow.. especially at this stage in your career... here is a sample of July for you..

July 1 2019 size: 5070
August 1 2019 size: 5127
Net change: +57

CA gone: 35
FO gone: 44
Total: 79

Most people going to Skywest have the same thought process. Get in, upgrade, move on to whoever calls first. This creates a lot of movement within the company. There is no real loyalty and almost all of the people I fly with have apps out to all the majors, fedex ups and Southwest. A lot also have apps at the low cost carriers too.

People who go to the American regionals primarily have only going to AA on their minds and sometimes to their own detriment. In other words, they will wait until flowing to AA instead of trying to get on elsewhere. It’s somewhat similar to endeavor and delta. They have getting to delta their main goal and will usually hold out applying at other places until their guaranteed interview comes. Problem is their interview is only after 18 months as captain and their upgrade is at a trickle right now. This can slow attrition at places like these as a lot of people choose to stay in line instead of bailing elsewhere.

Skywest is far from perfect, but has a quick upgrade, good selection of bases, and a lot of attrition. Upward movement has come quickly and seniority in the junior bases moves fast.

Not anymore. Most of the 9E pilots who are planning to move on have apps out everywhere. Our attrition is back up to about 30 per month from a pilot group of around 2000. That's about the same proportion as 75 per month from the 5000 at OO. Currently, only a small percentage of our attrition is related to Delta.

We do have a substantial amount of lifers at 9E who aren't going anywhere. That's a different issue, obviously, but you'll find that at any regional that has been around for a while.

That’s good to hear. Glad to see people are not fully buying into the dgi program and are heading elsewhere. Hopefully it gets to the point where delta rolls out some incentives to stay and strengthens the progression for endeavor guys.

Thank you all so much for your feedback, it is greatly appreciated. Are the FO's that leave mainly going to Majors or are they going to other types of aviation jobs?

Majors, LCC’s.

Southwest has a pilot cadet program now, might be worth a look.

https://careers.southwestair.com/D22...paign=OBAP2019

We have absolutely no formal flow agreement. It doesn't seem to hinder people's ability to move on. I've seen OO people scatter to all different companies. More quickly now that I think everyone is finally accepting that management doesn't care about us being under staffed and worked to absolute death. Alot of people are tapping out and going elsewhere.

Would you provide some clarity on “worked to absolute death”? Don’t you bid for lines so that how much you fly a month (above mins) is up to you? Or are you talking about duty hours? I’m still trying to wrap my ahead around how that works and another thread talking about automatic extensions. Thanks