Why hire military over your competition?

[Dan Roman]

There is nothing more entertaining than a guy with no experience or street cred trying to argue a point.

Get back in your box. Literally.

He made a very valid point and it was well said, yet all you did was respond with a grade school level insult? Really?
His point was spot on that a good pilot can come from any background as can a weak one. It is in fact up to the individual .
I find it interesting that apparently SWA has a clique of what has been named Kernals. They sound like a piece of work and in fact not particularly good airline pilots, I have to wonder if some of them are in on this string? Any pilot that thinks his background makes him superior invariably ends up being weaker than the pilots that have the attitude livingthesim expressed. Whether it's someone that thinks they are better because they went to Embry Riddle or someone thinks because they came from a certain branch of the service, it's always the ones with the narcissistic attitude that need to express their background makes them better that are generally the ones with an inferiority complex and not confident enough to let their flying speak for themselves.

 

[SIG600]

Because you are allowed to shoot practice approaches, and if you just happen to get the runway in sight, and deem it safe to land, you can.

You know OPNAV prohibits practice approaches when the wx is below mins, right? For this very reason. Not that it probably matters anymore.

Dan, he's making generalizations about different groups of pilots having never actually flown with any of them. Sim instructing is not flying.

 

[Dan Roman]

You know OPNAV prohibits practice approaches when the wx is below mins, right? For this very reason. Not that it probably matters anymore.

Dan, he's making generalizations about different groups of pilots having never actually flown with any of them. Sim instructing is not flying.

Well he is still in a good position to see a lot of pilots perform and he is correct that a persons background says a lot less about how he will do versus his attitude and and the individual.

 

[DCAA320]

You know OPNAV prohibits practice approaches when the wx is below mins, right? For this very reason. Not that it probably matters anymore.

It didn't back in the day, I don't think, not 100% positive.

 

[scoreboardII]

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

Not saying, when the night was long, weather sucked, and fuel was on fumes, you did do what you had to do. Been there.

The kernel comment, not reserved fro military guys, in fact, it only applies to those self selected few who can't seem to get along, live let live, or cooperate and graduate. Every encounter with them is a test of wills. An ego thing. No need to be military to have that kernel moniker.

 

[livin'thesim]

There is nothing more entertaining than a guy with no experience or street cred trying to argue a point.

Get back in your box. Literally.

I have no experience or street cred? Now, how would you know that, you little nancy-boy? Keep swinging your purse at me tho, it allllmost hurts...

Maybe you're projecting your own insecurities and raw cowardice onto others?

 

[waveflyer]

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

Not saying, when the night was long, weather sucked, and fuel was on fumes, you did do what you had to do. Been there.

The kernel comment, not reserved fro military guys, in fact, it only applies to those self selected few who can't seem to get along, live let live, or cooperate and graduate. Every encounter with them is a test of wills. An ego thing. No need to be military to have that kernel moniker.

True

But it's mostly ex military and everybody knows it including you.

I think that's the thing - civilians know with no question that we have our special ed pilots- too many mil guys come in cocky-

And the good ole boy network they have set up absolutely pisses on the good civilians
It's flat out wrong and discriminatory

 

[Russ]

It didn't back in the day, I don't think, not 100% positive.

From the mid 80's on when I was involved there were minimums. For me to give a PAR below mins an emergency had to be declared and even then guidance stopped over landing threshold.
As your pic is some version of the SH-60 I imagine you were a VV/VM aviator and published mins applied. Short of a VFR practice approach followed by a hold what you got from threshold in, you didn't do a 0/0 approach to a runway. Can't speak to what the swabbies did on the boat.

 

[livin'thesim]

Zero automation, PAR.

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

Wrong, they try to make the QRH easy for everyone now and there are so few memory items also.

I would say it is more up to the individual on how they handle an emergency.

I think we can all agree that there is more to handling an emergency than simply reading a QRH. I mean, srsly???

If all it took was reading skills and a basic aircraft checkout, then we could have 400 hour captains.

Nice try, but try again.

It absolutely baffles me how hard people will work to try and compare a fresh low-time military pilot as automatically a better candidate than a 10,000 hour regional captain.

There is like some sort of "that does not compute" circuit or something. It's like a primitive tribe of egoism, I have to say.

I would never try to claim that civilian pilots are superior, but I have seen more than a few outperform military pilots.

"It all depends on the individual" only the insecure or foolish would try to argue with that.

 

[livin'thesim]

You know OPNAV prohibits practice approaches when the wx is below mins, right? For this very reason. Not that it probably matters anymore.

Dan, he's making generalizations about different groups of pilots having never actually flown with any of them. Sim instructing is not flying.

Who says I have not flown with a wide mixture of pilots? You're inferring a lot from my screen name.

But anyway, the sim gives you a real chance to see how good a pilot's technical skills are, since you can really test their positional awareness in ways that you can't readily observe on the line.

Getting lost on dme arcs, poor power management on non-precision approaches, poor V1 cuts, over-reliance on the FD, etc.

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

It all depends on the pilot.

 

[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.