Glad you are not in HR then. Internships are valuable for both the company and the intern. yeah, it is free labor, but the company gets to see the intern in action, the intern gets to build relationships with the company and learn about the industry. Many, many industries have internships which are almost required in order to move forward in that industry.

 

Did you work for a regional? If so, you pretty much worked for free there. What's the diff?

 

^^^ THIS ^^^

I have a friend that was a UAL intern several years ago (not sure if it was 2000, or not) and he was picked up last April. He is just about to come off of probation. Keep working on it.

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And if you were an HR department, you'd be demonstrating how your HR department is pretty ignorant about internships.

 

Flight Operations Interns are now paid. We have one who was offered a job at COPA as soon as he graduates from Purdue. Starting pay is like 47K plus housing etc. Not a bad way to begin your career as a 22 year old single guy with student loans. With the shortage and hiring over the next 5 years, he will probably be a 25 year old UAL new hire. BTW I've met him and he is one heck of a sharp/nice guy who I'm sure will be receiving high marks from his mentor.

 

I did an internship with CAL in 1999. Worked in the CPO at EWR. It was the only position available at EWR. The rest of the interns went to Houston to work in various offices (most of which were downtown at HQ). The stipulation for getting EWR was that you had to live near by (on your own dime). Luckily I grew up 20 min from the airport, so I was able to crash with the parents. We didn't get paid, but did get college credits, some ground school and 20 hours in a B727 simulator at IAH. We also got a tour of the Boeing plant in WA, a tour of Houston center, IAH tower, had unlimited jumpseat privileges and got 6 buddy passes to use after the internship was over. Overall, not a bad deal. Worked my arse off, had tons of fun and met a lot of good people. I did keep in touch with the CPO there for quite a while thinking I was going to apply to CAL in '07, but wound up landing a fulltime ANG gig and he retired in the '08-'09 timeframe. I'll be submitting an app to UAL within the next 4-5 months, so we'll see if it helps any.

 

RJ guy? Nah. 19 year UAL pilot. I have had 5 flying jobs. I got all of them based on my competitive experience. I never even considered working for free to jump in front of the Q.

 

you speak as if interning is "jumping" the line in some sort of scab fashion. You probably never had to opportunity or for what ever reason didn't get into an internship. If by saying you intentionally didn't do an internship because you have too much "integrity" to "jump" any sort of line i guess you must also consider yourself an uninformed superhero on the side. A "low information voter" if you will. There is nothing wrong with networking, working your ass off, and getting college credit. Especially if its before you even enter the work force. The only people who bash interns are the people who didn't intern themselves or are jealous someone else had the initiative to go out and be proactive for an opportunity later in life.

 

Guess you don't understand the concept of seniority. Higher seniority = good.
Internship = most likely higher seniority in the end

You = horribly misinformed on internships

 

A lot of career fields have internships. Some are paid. Some aren't. Wanting to get paid for the 3-4 months of your "hard work" is a very near sighted attitude.