Std Deviation

It's like someone dropped the pile on the floor and whatever order they were picked up in goes first. My group had an Air Alaska Pilot interview with us on the 25th of FEB. Same time slot. She got a class the first week in April. The rest are getting classes now. Pretty big disparity in time.

JustAnotherPLT

Std Deviation, sorry to hear about your situation. I know they've been having some people struggle through training and their backgrounds are from all spectrums. Recency, I believe, is a way for them to try to nip these problems in the butt and is probably just the start of "filters" they will experiment with. I see your background and I'm sorry it happened to you. In the mean time, be careful what you say about a company you want to work for, you never know who's reading these. Negativity never goes far in this industry.

Cheers

Std Deviation

I don't have anything negative to say other than a slight critique about how long my situation remained in limbo. If I was was truly negative I would not be trying to find an interim flying job that will be financially brutal for a potential second chance. The thing is, after recency is attained I'm now in play again across the board which includes the dozens of corporate contacts I made teaching over the last couple years. I'm just venting I guess. It was a pretty big shocker. But you're right - there's a lot that can be misinterpreted. I hope that's not the case. In the long run it might be best to close this chapter and open another book.

Herc67

Exactly, this could be a blessing for you longterm. Once you get some currency, everything will be in play for you.

Rascal

I have friend that was in phase 2 for about 2 months and just received a letter stating that he will not be offered a class date since he is not competitive at this time. He has over 7200TT and flies and average of 800 hours a year, so I don't think it is a currency issue. Wasn't phase 2 just a background check?

Ted Striker

That's not what I wanted to hear!

rfw22

It makes me wonder how the definition of competitiveness is determined. Let's think about it. Almost everyone who goes for an interview is qualified from a technical standpoint. We have been through enough "flying" life experiences to be trained to fly for jetBlue (or so I would hope). But in the end, I have to wonder if "competitive" is the sum of the scores received during the interview, the background check, etc. In other words, is there a system by which they rank the prospective applicants...metrics that we may or may not consider. That score, a culmination of various data points, is the gatekeeper.

In the end, they hold the cards, and they determine who joins their family and represents them. Some things will always remain a mystery I suppose.

Ted Striker

Are they just interviewing a lot more than they need?

Std Deviation

The whole hiring experience is an interesting process and varies across companies (and also between corporate and 121). I've been on interviews that are purely technical (last one was a sim eval, Jepp chart quiz, and not a single TMAAT question), purely HR, and blended. I've had some graduate work in organizational psychology and yet the aviation paradigm eludes me.

In regards to currency what about a pilot that has been furloughed for 6+ years and then returns solely based on a contractual provision? Or one out on medical for a long period of time. These pilots return to service indicating the skill is trainable and returns quickly. I get that people are having trouble in training. But correlation does not imply causation. Yes scoring low on the SAT is correlated with low grades in college; however, that does not guarantee those with a low SAT score will fail out of college. Motivation, effort, and attitude can mean the difference. A recency issue is not a certain causal factor in a training failure.

In the end employee selection is a dice roll. You can run all the metrics, look at the pedigree and give the thumbs up to later find it was a terrible decision. And you'll never know how many good people walked out the door. I think what's frustrating for pilots is the nebulous hiring process at any employer- we like hard, fast, solid rules and logic so we can fix the problem and improve.

There's a whole slew of things that you need to evaluate when analyzing training failures. You've got to get through the he said/she said and peel back the layers. And then you really need to determine if your data is a fluke or if it's even statistically significant. There's a lot of psychological biases that have to be taken into account. "we've had three fail in a row because of issue X so that's our problem." Not necessarily. Check airman as a whole are not versed in statistics or psychology.

Another interesting metric would be background compared to longevity. It's in the best interest of a company to keep you there after investing in you. Few companies track that.

Softpayman

Hopefully this is an anomaly and not something that happens often.

Perhaps this is their way of skirting a more complicated explanation regarding a background check or negative comment from somebody already at JB. Remember they do post applicants names in the CPO for review.

Otherwise 7200hrs and current seems to be a sweet spot, that alone raises no red flags.