Hello everyone,

I currently have the Airapps application completed for Delta and United. I know 2 United pilots who submitted recommendations via the online system (I flew with them when they were in the Army). I have not submitted any other recommendations. Am I dropping the ball by not getting all sorts of recommendations uploaded? Army Chief Pilot, other army pilots, guys I have flown with in the past, other people who can talk highly of me but who I havent flown with? Are those non airline pilot recommendations worth anything?

Thanks

 

Good question. There may be a sweet spot on those recs (but I don't know what it is). I went into a DAL interview with more than half a dozen recs, 4 from pilots who not only had flown with me, but had given me flight evals in different aircraft I had flown in the service, AND they were all now DAL pilots. Another from a former commander who was a DAL pilot. Another from a G.O. These were gold-standard recs and seemed as good as you could get. Went into the interview and it was pretty clear they wanted to take me down a notch, which they proceeded to do quite effectively.

 

Here is another data point, probably doesn't mean much since it was back in 2000.

I know a guy that got an interview and got hired at United in 2000 with no rec letters. He was just the AWG captain at a large regional and zero jet time. A friend of his at the same company had 2 internal recs and a lot more PIC time and he never got called for an interview.

The word on the street at the time was United used a point system, you got points for every category on the app. For example 121 PIC time was worth more points than FO time. The un-official word was that you got one point if you had a internal rec and it didn't matter how many you had, you still only got one point.

I don't have any idea what they do now but it would make sense that rec letters only count as a small part of what gets you an interview, otherwise the people with 10 or 20 letters would be getting all the interviews and that is not the case.

 

Quite a few regional first officers the past few weeks getting called and doing well in the interview. Most have been great people with 5 + yrs at a regional and strong backgrounds. It is interesting watching the group's of people they are calling. Still a lot of good competition out there.

 

Any Continental interns get hired recently? I'm a 2000 Continental intern (assigned to Continental Express Chief Pilot office, when CAL wholly owned CoEx)? Date of availability is October this year.


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I interviewed on April 16th and while I was there I spoke with 3 other candidates waiting around for their panel interview or sim ride. I am a regional FO and two of the three guys I spoke with were also regional FO's. We three had at least 7 years at the regionals, but just got stuck in the right seat. The common theme was our "extra's." One guy was a pilot in the reserves. The other guy and I are both in the training department among other things. I got the CJO on 4/22. Not sure about the other FO's.

 

Is it common at your regional to have FOs in the training dept? I've heard about a few majors that use FOs to teach ground school and some sim instruction, but I didn't realize there were regionals that did anything like that.

 

The regional I work at utilizes FO's for systems/indoc, flows/procedures, and basic aircraft training using a simulator with the motion turned off.

 

Get as many recommendations as you can. I had one internal, one from a check airman at my current job (SkyWest) and the rest were from the Army and I received the call.

Keep plugging away and update your applications often. I still have no idea how I got the call but did (and forever grateful and humbled by it). Here are my qualifications:

5400 TT
840 Army Helo and current member of the ARNG
100 PIC 121 (upgraded in JAN2015)

Hope that helps a bit.

 

Thinks for logging in to tell me that.

I will round up those rec's