Lufthansa United
 

Is this actually real?

https://www.lufthansa-flight-trainin...ammfuerpiloten

"New Perspectives: United Airlines and Lufthansa establish a Career Path Program for Pilots"

Yes, it's true

So flight instruct to ATP mins and go directly to UA? Wow... So it's similar to JB's program. How do the UA pilots feel about this since JB pilots have been pretty vocal against their program?

How many flow through programs actually produce flow throughs?

Fine by me.

In a couple years we are gonna be hiring lower time pilots one way or the other. I'd rather have them coming up through LH's structured program compared to JB's homemade Cape Air deal or towing banners to check a box.

Besides, UAL seemed to do just fine hiring even LESS experienced pilots in the late sixties. The key was they were paired with very experienced pilots. Sure, there will be exeptions with some of the new hires.....but the same could also be said of some of our recent very "experienced" hires. ;)

At the end of the day I'd rather have very capable and motivated young pilots being mentored by our pilot group than have them being "mentored" by a pilot with 200 more hours at a regional. Is a 737 or 320 really that different than a E170?

We were all young and low time at the start of our careers.

Those pilots hired in the 60's went to the panel and observed the system for an extended period of time. With everything else I agree.

I was one of those from the 60's. Commitment from UAL was I would be hired if I got my commercial in one year. Got it within three months or so.
UAL paid for instrument rating and I was "on the payroll", although the pay certainly wasn't much! :eek:
Started "on the line" in April 1967 as a DC-6 FE - 22 years old.
Retired as 777 Captain.
Lucky? Understatement of my life.

Good points and I definitely agree. Was curious to see how you guys perceived it as compared to the JB pilots.

Again, there's only about 15,000 regional pilots who'd all love the chance to fly for United...

Divide that by three, you still have 5000 applicants, and it'd take UAL close to a decade to retire that many people. This doesn't even consider up-and-coming students/CFI's or the many guys at LCC's/majors.

Point being, a program like this doesn't seem close to necessary yet. I hope it just means they're worried about their own pilot supply down the line and hire accordingly, but if and when CFI's start getting hired before guys with thousands of hours in a jet that says United Express on the side, well, that wouldn't be cool.

ATCA has been doing this for years with Lufthansa. When I was at ASU (Arizona State University), we had a flight program through them that you could eventually compete for an internship with United.

It may take UAL a decade to retire that many, but it only take 3 for the US industry to retire that many. Those are the same applicants on file everywhere.

Having been in a regional uniform not that long ago, and confident that there are many very well qualified candidates in the regional ranks, I couldn't disagree more with your "this doesn't seem close to necessary yet" thought.

Put yourself in the airline's position - first, of the 15,000 regional pilots you mention and considering, let's say, a 10 year window, some pilots from that group are going to be hired elsewhere, some will be too near retirement, others won't want to make the transition and still others will be not particularly hirable for various reasons. Either way, any graph of required vs available pilots (worldwide) starts to look pretty alarming in the not too distant future. There are a lot of companies (and militaries) looking for pilots and they're all in competition to varying degrees.

As the airline, is it worth ramping up several potential sources of future pilots to continue to exact some control over quality and quantity needed, or is it better to just wing it and worry about it later, or take what's left of the remaining pilots applying? If I were making those decisions (and thank goodness I'm not lol) I'd want to start at least the framework for a few different means of obtaining pilots of the desired quality, and if more or fewer are needed over the long run, well, the rate can be adjusted through the size of the program.

From a line pilot perspective, my big hope and expectation is whatever the source, which will surely continue to include plenty of regional pilots, I just want quality pilots and quality people.

If they really want to be proactive, they could hire all 15,000 (or however many are hireable) right now and screw their competition.

you do realize that would bankrupt the company before it even came close to hurting the competition, if it were even feasible?

Being on the panel was probably the hardest/ most work of the three positions in the cockpit.

As someone working on their PPL I would love to join this program. But for some reason I feel it will be damn near impossible to get hired...

Obviously that wouldn't be practical, I just meant it as a joke.

I agree it was a lot of work and daunting at first. It was a completely different, yet trainable position from what we were used to.

Where does Lufthansa place their new hires originating from the training academy? Do they place bidding restrictions on them until certain levels of experience have been attained?

Lufthansa new hires either go to Lufthansa, Lufthansa Cityliner, Air Dolomiti, Eurowings, or Germanwings, depending on needs of the company.

Perhaps they don't want to take more pilots away from their already severely understaffed regionals. Taking the pilots straight from this school prevents a further shortage at the regional partner and decreases overall training costs (replacement of selected regional captain to United and replacement of upgraded FO) vs creating another opening at the school.

Just a thought.

I wonder how long one would work at ATCA before going to United?

18 months at ATCA

Where does it state that?

From 1988 to late 1992 United hired pilots with as little as 250 hours.

At least at lUAL that is completely untrue. The minimum hours just to apply was 350 and no one, including interns, had less than 500. The average hours hired since 1985 has been somewhere near 3000. Even the infamously 570 group typically had ATP.

There are a few exceptions due to ethnic and gender requirements, but still nothing near 500 hour mark and again most were ATP.

Now if you mean lCAL I have no idea what the min was.

Considering gender I wonder if Kaitlin J could get hired today? Age, gender, famous media, ESPN heroe and so much more. UAL could even use KJ to do the safety video. :(

Sorry, this is a public forum for Airline pilots..this thread is particular to UAL pilots..no joking is allowed:D

Nice to hear from someone who knows a double shorted secondary when he sees one.;)

Why are the 570 infamous? Did they do something bad by striking against the B-scale payrates?

I don't think accepting a job during a strike qualifies as "striking".

Hi Staller

Sorry to burst your bubble. I was hired April '87. There were several in my class that had less than 1000 hrs, in fact one only had 650. I was in the first group to be interviewed after the pool of interviewies were used from the strike.

The 650 person had a very rough time getting through but we did have a lot of other experience in the class with some prior heavy time. In the end, we got everyone though, and a lot of instructing on our own to do it.

Our 727 FE class was the shortest in UAL history--which didn't help any. Right after our class, UAL announced that they had lost the EEOC discrimination hiring law suit. Everything changed. I'm sure our class was impacted by the "new requirements."

My 727 FE instructor in 95 told me in the past they had to give remedial classes to some new hires. They had to teach them what pressurization, hydraulic systems, etc was. From scratch.

But weren't they the ones who ended up not crossing the line and stayed on strike when the 539 were the ones who actually tried to be scab? I always thought the 570 were actually decent guys.

Well Dave if you read my post it was a response to the writer who posted United hired 250 hour pilots. Additionally you confirmed what I wrote, most had at least ATP and the bottom you experienced was 650 hours. When I was hired in 78 the lowest time person (a woman) had 850 or so hours and I'm sure there were others with slightly less, but not many. However, as you confirm the minimum allowed in the app was 350 and even the interns had more than that.

I was an LCA on the 737-200 in 95 and the lowest time F/O new hire I checked out was an intern with around 650+ hours.

So you didn't bust a single bubble at all you confirmed what I posted.

Thank you very much.

To the other poster:

Now were the 570 ever scabs? How many times does this have to be answered? NO! I believe only two actually crossed the picket line.

Oh and Dave the subject was minimum hours and you turned it into deficiency as pilots. You may have forgotten the senior caps when you were hired had many who were hired with almost no time and In their day the initial new-hire class was close to three months, mostly learning how to build the airplane systems.

Today it's a switchology approach to systems, read the check list, turn it off or on, check the inop list and then apply a performance penalty. Much simpler approach and it meets minimum FAA required system knowledge.

I know people in the program already

I know the focus is UAL here, but this may ruinate things at ATCA. "academy type" instructors eager for a job will work there for next to nothing just for the promise of a flow to UAL.
When I was there, ATCA was a very good job and it pays pretty decent. Now its going to be peanuts. There always seems to be a turd in the punchbowl.

"Once selected and hired by United, these pilots would start as United "new hires" and would be eligible to fly aircraft in United's narrow body fleet. "

When would they be eligible to "fly" the entire fleet? Which part of the contract separates the fleets and allows limiting pilots to a type?

Black helicopters aside, there is way more to this than what is currently shown.

Just in case, you don't really know, it doesn't. New hires have not hit wide bodies yet, although it's getting very close. 2 & 3 year guys have been getting a lot of 777 F/O bids.

The 767 fleet is the exception. The 767 is really a wide body, but for pay, it's a bit weird. Many new hires on the 767/757.

Black helicopters aside, it's simply a figure of speech written by somebody in the basement of the PR department. Once hired the only restriction is what their seniority can hold.

Sometimes hoof prints are simply evidence of horses.

As opposed to hoof noises..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHFXG3r_0B8