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Why is Express Jet Bothering with LOW TIMERS?

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Wow Mr. About Time, it's amazing you aren't director of Training Department by now! Guess which people in my newhire class had the most retraining events, longest IOE's, and scored most poorly on the indoc and systems writtens? The 600-800 hr newhires you say? WRONG.

It was the middle aged pilots who'd been flying boxes in recips or been switch bitches in a citation or something similair. The young instructors for the most part fared well. The strongest trainees were obviously the few that had flown prior 121 or had a 91/135 job where they actually got to FLY the airplane.

Now am I saying I was gods gift to jet pilots when they slung in me the right seat of the ERJ at 800 hrs and asked me to fly a Love field turn out of IAH with icing and thunderstorms? No, far from it. If the IOE check airman had a heart attack at went comatose on the takeoff roll could I have safely swung the thing back around for an ILS and landing? Definitely. Does having 800 hrs and being 22 years old mean I include the words "like", "dude", and "totally" in every sentence in the cockpit? No. Is trying to predict a pilot's skill and learning ability based solely on his or her age and the number in the back of their logbook a foolish way to run an airline hiring department? Yes.

Expressjet looks for the total package in the interview....they do a pretty good job of screeing the flakes and weirdos. Yet somehow I managed to slip through their defenses....interesting.
 
about time said:
I for the life of myself don not understand why my employer hires these low time pilots, when you have qualified people on the street such as my brother and sisters from Indpendence Air. I am happy that our training !

Maybe XJT is hiring them because they don't have a pi$$ poor attitude. Getting along with a crew in a crew environment is just as important as time in an airplane.
 
It just happens to be, I was in the same class as you at XJT and also a former
I-guy. Although I very much do wish that XJT hired everyone of our furloughed brothers and sisters, however in yours friends case it had absolutely nothing to do with experience. Rumor has it, that it was his attitude that got the door slammed in his face. Before you get on these boards accusing low timers for your friends attitude problems get your fact straight, bud.
Attitude plays a big role in this business. Experience is not only measured by how many hours you have or how many types you have flown, but also by your personality and trait.
 
wow, a guy has a problems during training and he gets called out..what did he do to deserve your rath and what does him being from Hawaii has to do with anything for all our sakes I hope you dont get to do any interviews, we'll have to give concessions to settle the lawsuits. Maybe we hire low timers because they are usually happy to be here instead of thinking someone owes them something. By the way my training class had a guy that failed training at PCL. Good luck to your brothers and sisters at I-Air.
 
labbats said:
When I was instructing, sometimes students would come in with student loans to pay for their instruction! Haha! To think that I would have to teach some gutter rat who doesn't even have rich enough parents to create a trust fund for his or her whims is revolting. Luckily, I invested in a noseplug to remove their laborious odor as I taught them how a real gentleman flies. I don my cape and board my limousine now that I am a wealthy regional pilot, and forget those awful times.

Are you serious? Perhaps trying to impress us with your wealthy upbringing? My parents didn't pay for my flight training. Got a full-time job while in college working for an airline where now I serve as a captain. I feel sorry for anybody that has to use the mask's that you are. Sorry indeed.

Perhaps you can add the following words to your vocabulary: humble...thankfull.
 
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Beechman said:
Are you serious? Perhaps trying to impress us with your wealthy upbringing? My parents didn't pay for my flight training. Got a full-time job while in college working for an airline where now I serve as a captain. I feel sorry for anybody that has to use the mask's that you are. Sorry indeed.

Perhaps you can add the following words to your vocabulary: humble...thankfull.

I think he was being humorous....
 
about time said:
I for the life of myself don not understand why my employer hires these low time pilots, when you have qualified people on the street such as my brother and sisters from Indpendence Air. I am happy that our training department is cracking down and getting rid of these inexperienced pilots.
We had this idiot from Hawaii in my class who was let go from training after failing his checkride, all the while I was thinking "yep another no experience pilot taking a seat from a qualified person." It just gets to me when one my experienced friends can not get on here, but they will hire Mr.Aloha,(by the way good luck at getting on with another 121 outfit Aloha boy, IT WON'T HAPPEN). I quess what I am trying to say to the low timers out there is that don't expect any breakes here, I mean seariously it is not that hard to fly a jet. I can't wait til I get to do interview one day, stand by!

And it is obvious our hiring process didn't get rid of ALL of the undesirables either.

As far as the Independence pilots who were interviewed for jobs here at ExpressJet: The vast majority of them were offered employment at XJT. The few that weren't were deemed to have "attitude" issues that the interviewers did not feel comfortable with.

YOU have no right to determine who is a qualified pilot for a particular company. Low-time pilots and high-time pilots equally have problems in training. If anything, it is the lower total time pilots who show up more prepared and willing to learn. (As a side note: I recently flew with one of the lowest time pilots I have ever flown with at this company. By far the most professional and skilled pilot I have had the opportunity to fly with--not to mention a mature demeanor.)

Your immature attitude speaks volumes about your character. It's pilots like you who feel you deserve everything automatically based on your age or your total flight hours. As someone who used to do interviews, I can tell you that your observations are way off base.
 
So your over qualified pilot buddies deserve the piss poor pay?
If your friends are anything like you, I can see why they can't get hired.
 
I used to work at Express. I used to interview pilots there as well. We almost preferred lower time pilots during 2000-2001 to higher time guys for several reasons. First, they almost always had clean flying backgrounds(ie. no LOI's etc.), and they were hired out of university flight schools. We did some studies and forcasted the average regional new hire #'s and realized that new hires at all the regionals that were hiring at the time were going to average around 600/100 in the near future. The events of 9/11 changed that but our intent was to set up relationships with major universities and even the Army to get sharp low time pilots right out of school who had some instructing experience and place them in our hiring pool. In the case of our Army experiment, we wanted to get guys out of helo's with around 250 hours of multi-engine fixed wing time into our training house as well. What this was supposed to do for us was ensure our airline around 100 new hires a month for the expected growth that were capable of passing our fast pased training environment. If the #'s we projected were accurate, every major regional airline would need between 30-100 pilots a month and several were hiring straight into RJ's and we wanted the sharpest in order to keep our training costs down not to mention maintain a safe airline. We took the lead in investing in lower time guys and gals who were deemed very intelligent and capable and would work out well with our airline. It never was about turnover.

IAHERJ
 

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