I just had that exact same experience this week. I thought I interviewed so/so at best. I like to think of myself as a good dude and fun to be around, but I didn’t feel like I exuded that in my interview. Seeing guys with way more hours who were way better spoken than me getting the TBNT made me 100% sure I didn’t get the job, especially with the current seemingly 30-40% CJO rate. Imagine my surprise getting a call from a chief pilot offering me the job haha

 

Flying into “heavy combat” does not translate to 121. It’s an entirely different animal. CRM. Pax service. Communicating with gate agents. Ground. Rampers.

Not a bash on the military guys and gals at all. That’s tough and dangerous flying I’m sure and I appreciate their service, but 121 is just an entirely different animal. One does not translate to the other.

 

All those things you listed are extremely easy skills to pick up.

Stop it with the nonsense. Talking to the rampers or the gate agent is not on par with going through military officer training or being in combat. It's not even in the same dimension.

 

This statement makes my point, thanks. Being confident or cocky are two different things and *some of those that think they are confident are just cocky.

 

burn me at the stake for saying this, but former military here. I have perspective from both sides as I gained my experience hauling checks, freight dawging. I can say mil experience definitely does not translate. That’s why so many mil guys have a deer in the headlights look when you speak of hauling freight, uncontrolled airports, crappy/no crew support.

 

We used to have a 7 min CRM exercise in front of a paper tiger with a moving MFD for location. 2 interviewers would sit in and be your FO/jumpseater. You had a scenario and had 7 min to figure it out.

Fairly easy for those in a 121 background. In my interview group we had a MIL C-17 guy. His scenario was a pax having a heart attack at FL370. He decided he was gonna spiral down to the airport he was directly above and land. Made that decision in about 20 sec. No input from anyone…”here’s what we’re gonna do”. Interviewers asked if he wanted to look at alternates, etc. “Nope”. Didn’t get hired.

During training we had MIL guys asking how to commute, pack for a 4 day, etc. I showed up for IOE and the CKA takes a look at my beat up bag and says, “oh thank god, you’re a regional guy, yeah?” I lol’d.

121 isn’t hard. It’s just different. Just like if you were using MIL terms to talk about a bombing run or aerial refueling or your training…I’d have a deer in the headlights look. Just use the resources given, be open to direction without taking it the wrong way, and have a good attitude….that’s all they’re looking for. You can train a monkey to fly a 737…you can’t train attitude.

 

"Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job." — Douglas Adams.

 

Communicating with people the right way is a character trait some people are better at than others. And I am not saying military people are worse, just that it NOT an easy skill to pick up. Nobody here said that it is on par with getting fired at, just that it is different. But the fact that you think of it as "talking to" says a lot more than you think...

 

To be fair this more shows a lack of interview prep on this one guy than some larger trend of mil dudes lacking CRM skills as a whole... Any prep service worth their salt would have told our poor C-17 doofus exactly how to handle these kinds of CRM exercises if he'd taken the time to research it for 5 minutes.

 

You're grasping at straws, bud. I pushed back against the implication that somehow mil guys aren't equally qualified as RJ people or 135 or people or really...anyone.

Basic people skills have nothing to do with military or non-military. Conflating what happens at a 121 with some enormously challenging skillset is silly. A military person can learn to work well with ops, the ramp, the FAs and the CSR the same way that a C-172 pilot does it when they get their first commuter job.

There are military guys with awful people skills who don't do well and there are civilian pilots with awful people skills who don't do well. I haven't met and don't know a single mil guy who had this huge struggle coming to an airline.