Most of the pilots hiring into the captain’s seat hope to get hired at a major airline before they wait so long. Translated: You may spend a very long time on reserve, working weekends and holidays, until you gain the seniority needed to get a better schedule. As current first officers gain the experience necessary to upgrade, they’ll move into the left seat, and they’ll be junior to you. So you’re junior to those pilots, and as they upgrade, you’ll stay at the very bottom of the seniority for your airplane and seat. The problem is, though, airlines are hiring for those positions because their first officers don’t have enough hours to upgrade. Current regional first officers looking to add turbine pilot-in-command time to their logbooks and résumés are mostly filling those positions. ![]() “Direct-entry captains,” some call it, and it’s a great chance for those who qualify. Many carriers are offering opportunities to hire in as a captain. You better believe our recruiters are licking their chops, longing for the day when they can go to a career fair and advertise that five-year upgrade. Not long after I get my 10-year upgrade, our company’s upgrade time will quickly fall to five years, because for five years there was almost no hiring. These are all things I had zero control over, and I’m not complaining. I’ll likely be in my 10th year with the company before I upgrade. Instead of upgrading in three to four years, it took that long to get off reserve. The mandatory retirement age changed from age 60 to 65. “Welcome aboard.” Reality set in the week I started training and crude hit $100 a barrel. “You’ll upgrade in two or three years and be at a major carrier pretty quickly after that,” he said with a slap on my back. In 2007, I hired on with my regional carrier, and the man interviewing me congratulated me after making the job offer. Upgrade time-the years spent gaining the seniority to upgrade-is a moving target that can lead you right down a box canyon if you let it. ![]() Subscribe today to Plane & Pilot magazine for industry news, reviews and much more! I had just finished up a trip by getting an earful from a customer complaining how pilots are so overpaid and underworked after our late arrival into Atlanta. “Well, if the upgrade to captain ever comes along, I’ll get more debt paid off,” seemed reasonable, and then some of us gave up and just kept driving our 300,000-plus-mile cars until the wheels fell off.įlying for a living never felt less glamorous than the day my noble Toyota gave up the ghost, and I sat beside the highway trying to decide if the scrap value would offset the towing bill to get it to a junkyard. Changing times made us reevaluate those goals. ![]() “I’ll pay it off when I’m at Delta,” many reasoned. Lots of hopeful pilots signed promises to lenders and racked up debt-often into the six-digit range-while chasing their dream to fly. Regional airlines have long been the conventional steppingstone for civilian pilots to get to a legacy airline.
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