Why hire military over your competition?

[livin'thesim]

... not confident enough to let their flying speak for themselves.

Bingo. Elitists are usually extremely normal people who are too fragile to admit they are normal people. They have deep seated insecurities that show up in interesting ways.

 

[acaTerry]

I'm curious why all of the majors continue to hire almost exclusively military while the LCCs like JetBlue, Allegiant, Virgin America and Spirit get one or two spots a month if any.

If I were in charge of a major airline I would want people who have already flown my same types of aircraft and by the simple fact of hiring them would hurt my competition.

LCCs are forced to hire fresh and pay to train replacements of those who go to the majors. You'd have newhires that are already consolidated and fully experienced.

What am I missing?

I'll say because employers can expect and count on most of the military to be differerent from their civilian counterparts. Things you don't see the average military guy doing:

1) Whining about having to wear a hat.

2) Walking around with their shirt untucked.

3) Blowing off people who ask directions at the airport.

4) Walking around the terminal with big-ass Dr. Dre Beats on their head.

5) Complaining about having to follow SOP.

6) Weighing in 40 lbs overweight.

7) Selling out on contracts because they're so happy to fly a jet.

8) Always doing the bare minimum just because they don't "have to" strive to be better.

9) Wearing shoes with big yellow bolts for laceholes.

10) Taking EVERYTHING personally and being a baby about something they don't like to hear.

Shall I go on?

PS...I was an enlisted Marine, not a pilot, so no bias here.

 

[pilotyip]

The military guys don't really perform much different than the civilian ones.

Only from experience, I have never had a training problem with a IFR rated militarty pilot. Even a 1000 hour military pilot has a consistent training success record. I do not see this with all civilian piltos. Now I will add when we were hiring furlouged major pilots, furloughed ABX pilots, these guys when through with no problems. If you came from a solid training background 121, or military it shows. There is a very wide variety of skill found in the 91/135 world.

 

[Russ]

ACAterry

Same background as you. I've seen pretty much all your bullet points attributable to military as well as civilian.

 

[retired guy]

I gave up counting all of the whiney(or whiny, take your pick) replies from the "civilian" pilots after about 20 or so.You boys sure have big old inferiority complexes.

 

[acaTerry]

ACAterry

Same background as you. I've seen pretty much all your bullet points attributable to military as well as civilian.

There is on both sides, but I have seen so very many more civilian pilots that fall under those points.

 

[DCAA320]

It did back in the day, there where always minimums with PAR's.

For sure, I just don't recall the practice approach restriction, not saying there wasn't one.

PAR? I am no more impressed by PAR than I am by CATIII

I am now calling you stupid because PARs were hand flown, CATIII's are coupled autopilot approaches. Stay in your sim.

Do you work for Asiana?

 

[LearLove]

I'm not getting into this BS thread but I have comment on PARs. Those things are awesome. If I were tsar for world aviation that would be the only approach in existence (along with "runway heading for vectors" being the only clearance). Radar everywhere and some guy just tells you what to do until the runway is insight. How could lazy pilots not love them? No briefing, no chart BS just fly the plane.

The first airline I flew for was a 135 outfit that flew a military contract between bases east of the Mississippi. PARs and VOR approaches were all we did. I think my sum total of 135 training for PARs was the chief pilot telling me to "just do what the guy yacking into your headset tells you to do until you see the runway".

The PAX river guys were great. It could be 1/8 mi vis and they'd ask us "what do you need?". We'd say 1800 and they'd pause for 30 seconds then come back and say, "hey it's 1800". Then this 20 year old enlisted guy would talk you down to a 10,000 foot long 300 foot wide piece of white concrete. Then we'd taxi to the base of the tower and let a bunch of V-22 engineers out that were happy to see that their scary flying eggbeater looking thing actually made it out of the hangar.

We'd walk around the base looking for some food for a few hours (just don't walk too close to the white painted 707s) then come back to the plane to find said engineers looking sad because said scary flying eggbeater looking thing broke once again and was grounded for another week. So we'd take them back home trying not to swap paint with crazy test pilot school T-38s that are ridiculously hard to see in the summer haze.

 

[Russ]

I am now calling you stupid because PARs were hand flown, CATIII's are coupled autopilot approaches. Stay in your sim.

And the real skill of a PAR is in the controller giving it. There's plenty more to brag about, not a PAR.

 

[livin'thesim]

Only from experience, I have never had a training problem with a IFR rated militarty pilot. Even a 1000 hour military pilot has a consistent training success record. I do not see this with all civilian piltos. Now I will add when we were hiring furlouged major pilots, furloughed ABX pilots, these guys when through with no problems. If you came from a solid training background 121, or military it shows. There is a very wide variety of skill found in the 91/135 world.

Of course. Only a fool would imply that a 1000 hour civilian pilot was better than 1000 military.

My assertion is that a high time regional pilot has demonstrated an ability to do the job, and a military pilot has demonstrated an ability to do a different, albeit more challenging one (in most cases).

The silly part is those who imply that a low time military pilot is the automatic equal of a high time civilian pilot.