Application Question
 

Ok, so I am working on my airlineapps for United and it asks for “any” traffic violations and details for each. As many people I have had tickets in my past, however they were all many years ago and no longer show up on my MVR. I have called the courts and Department of Motor Vehiicles and none keeps records far. Enough back for me to get info on the tickets.. I don’t want to be in-truthful but I do not have the II formation to enter. Anyone know what I should do?

You can put an approximate date. Don’t lie. When they say ANY they mean it.

The worst thing that can happen at an interview is that you get caught in a lie. Even if you don’t get caught, you will probably trip up your interview because you’ll be nervous that they will find out. Worse, if you get through the interview, you’ll be wondering if they will discover the lie in your background check. Bottom line, admit to it and move on. They probably don’t care about a few tickets and it takes the stress off, allowing you to focus on the interview.

I suggest paying for one of those online background check websites. My tickets showed up there while not showing at the DMV sites. It’s not very expensive. Hope that helps.


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What he said. I faced the same issue as you. Be as honest as you can. Mother U isn’t about holding your feet to the fire. Unless they catch you in an outright lie.

I had a similar issue with a couple of them. I used approximate dates.

Never thought twice about it, I imagine it's a very common situation.

I had a handful from when I was young and dumb. I ballparked when and where for the ones I couldn't piece together. They didn't show up on online background checks or the national driver registry. I went to court for each and they were knocked down but I didn't remember which ones were by how much but I did vaguely remember the original tickets X over speed limit Y. So I just listed the worst case scenario even though I plead guilty to a 7 over ticket. They really don't care unless you have a list down to the floor and/or are still actively driving like an idiot. They want honesty and being caught in the teensiest oops raises so many questions that it is an immediate move to the "never call again" pile. If they bring it up during the interview (rarely happens) just explain you were being completely honest but some were so old you couldn't remember specifics.

The most important thing is to get your airlineapps polished and ready to go RIGHT NOW. Once the Hogan is emailed to you it starts the process and your airlineapps info is locked in until your interview day. Any changes or deletions aren't going to matter but if you show up on interview day and add 5 speeding tickets, a checkride bust, or a college gpa that was a 2.5 vs the 3.0 you claimed when they called you... It won't end well. Take that stress off you right now.

Back before Doris retired and before they let us check on friends applications...Doris lookd one up for me. She said my friend didn’t have any traffic violations listed and that actually reduces the scoring on your application.

Its not that they want you to make up traffic violations if you didnt have any. It was more an indicator of truthfulness. A majority of applicants have some sort of violation listed and the ones that don’t are sort of the odd balls. Doris recommended that I tell my friend to dig deeper into his memory bank and think back to that time when he may of been pulled over.

It worked like a champ. He updated his application and three months later...this former L-1011 Captain, 767 Captain, 747 Captain still hadn’t been called. Sorry Danno!

On this topic, I have really been worried that my record might affect my app. Gone with Centerline Prep and they (Keith) did not voice any concerns (great experience with him BTW). I have 9 total tickets with 6 of them occurring within 30 days of each other (accident that lead to failure to yield, just had expired registration and inspection, not knowing I had a court date after I thought I paid it all off, so failure to appear... just 19 year old dumb kid logic). Anyways, now 9 years later and I am wondering from anyone who has been hired with a hand full of tickets, how big of a speed bump was that for you in the selection process. More importantly, how did it go in the interview? What I'm wondering here is how much they frown upon those teen years and if I should try to do things like attempt to get any expunged/dismissed? Last ticket is now over 4 years ago. Thank you very much for the replies!

Just answer YES to the “any” question.

I’ve told this story on APC previously but here it is again as I personally witnessed a new-hire classmate being escorted off the property during indoc because the background check came back right after class started.

He thought his record was clean because a serious driving incident as a youngster had been expunged by the state due to being a first offense and good behavior (it was part of his sentencing). Thus, his printed record from the DMV was spotless.

He made a mistake starting out but clearly learned his lesson, moved on, and had a successful journey up the aviation food chain all the way to UA.

However, 10+ years later it was still in the database of the company that did background checks because they simply scooped up all public records in real time and didn’t expunge data later.

The drama went on for a couple days as flight ops wanted to keep him and UA legal wanted him gone. In the end, legal won.

There has to be more to this story. If it was “expunged”, he is legally allowed to say it never happened. Expunged is not the same as sealed either.

Generally, they are not too concerned about the misadventures of a 19 year old. Everybody has been there, done that. Some simply got caught.

They are concerned, however, about somebody that didn’t learn anything at 19 and is still having serious misadventures at age 30+.

LOL, i.e., I ran from the cops and they had to chase me down in a pursuit!

haha, yea I'm sure quite a bit of embarrassing explanations during the interview for the younger folks, so I guess an accident is not too bad. Thanks for the stories. Also, one final question is if UA ponders why you change/add incidents long after creating a profile... here's my story...

Got a call from a JP office a few months ago saying that I needed to pay this outstanding ticket, I say say from when? Answer, October 2008. Never remember getting pulled over but it was a long time ago. Her response was "yea, we are a little backed up"...NO SH#T, by 10 years!!! True story y'all. Anyways, I added it to my record but I update once a month, so the first year on Airline Apps it wasn't recorded and now it is. Thoughts? I'm probably overthinking it :D

Think big picture. They don't want applicants who have clean apps suddenly adding things like checkride busts, DUIs, 10s of speeding tickets, a felony conviction, etc AFTER they get called for the interview. One speeding ticket from 08 probably won't be an issue. If you want, you can address it up front

Had several tickets tickets through out my younger life . Various kinds and various levels of tickets (careless, Wreckless dropped to carelesset. , most of which I got withheld Adjudicated etc. no felony level tickets

However , went 10 years clean before my United interview.

Submitted “yes” to the ticket section, and explained very brief explanation. Was never asked once anything about them.

Very good to hear. That's relieving!

Application Question
 

Question: I finished doing the Hogan on Thursday, and my understanding is that they take a snapshot of your app afterwards.
I got an app review and it revealed very minor things to correct (e.g. a dot, a few change of words here and there.)
I do not need to actually add or remove anything. Just make these minute corrections if i want to.
My questions is: Once at the interview, are these the kind of changes that they want you to mark with the red pen?
Or
What wind of changes should I be concerned with?
Thanks!


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I had similar issues including my flight time being off . When I got there she said under a 100 hours don’t even mention it and anything major I could bring it up but not to be too stressed on it.

It depends on when they pull and print your app.
In my case it was ~3 months between app pull and interview(I’m guessing they pull your app once you pass the Hogan)....so good thing I got there 30 min early and had time to adjust my flight times (rj guys can easily fly 250ish hours in that time)

Application Question
 

There’s 2 forms the give you at the interview. One is the printed app (same format as if you printed your app PDF), another is a summary that only they have access to. My printed app that they handed me to correct was at least 3 months old, which I know because I completely overhauled my app and fixed some things 3 months before my invite and the changes I made weren’t on there (just verbiage changes, auditing hours, spelling errors, etc) The summary sheet had all these changes and up-to-date hours. So I’d assume the app is printed when they look at it, but they also print a summary snapshot when they send you an invite, and they want both corrected/updated in red pen when you get there for your interview. Like a previous poster said, hours off by <100hrs need no correction.

Captsurfer

My info is from 5 years ago but here is my experience. I applied to UAL the last week of May 2013. I figured I had “years” to get my app together and cleaned up since I had not used AirlineApps since 2007 (I was hired at B6 and then everyone stopped hiring). UAL called me 2 days after I applied. My address was wrong, flight times were guesses that ended being 800 hours off (hadn’t logged time in 6 years), and I found a good bit of grammatical errors. I updated all that information between first phone call and interview. The BIG thing is the jobs, the experience, the meat and potatoes did not change. I brought an updated app (printout from airline app), resume, and things that were on the paperwork that it said to bring to the interview.

I was hired and no one seemed to mind. I think it’s important that if you said you were check airman then you better be one, if you said you have 2000 as a captain at an airline then you better be a captain and have 2000ish hours as a captain not 1501 and rounded up. Interviews are a big deal and you want to be perfect both on paper and in person but we are all pilots. When was your last perfect flight? I’ve never had one.....so why would the interview be any different?

Good luck

Hell, I had all kinds of tickets...Speeding, stop signs, red lights...you name it, and they still hired me 21 years ago. The secret is...Even though it says “type or print neatly”...Just type the damn application! :D
Seriously...Good luck! Hope to fly with ya soon.