ClappedOut145

Nope. We have a lot of regional MEC members here and people who have served in every committee possible. If anything, it’s helpful. Especially if you were LOSA, central air safety, SOAR, and others.

flynd94

dude, relax. It took me to till I was 47 to make it to United and that’s after 11 years at a regional, few years as a 135 freight dog, traffic watch and CFI’ing for a few years. All told 15+ years till I made to a legacy.

patience grasshopper. The industry is cyclical.

Turbosina

This right here...x100

sdj1986

A few years ago 33 would have been one of the youngest in a new hire class.

at6d

What you are describing is…reality. The Golden Wave was unprecedented in aviation history. We can’t base an airline career off of a fluke. In January of 2000, I was hired by a regional at age 25 with a multiengine ATP. I was in the bottom 7 of my class for age and experience. It took me 15 years to get hired at a major. There are countless Lost Decade folks out there with similar stories.

Your benefit right now is that there are still retirements coming, and hopefully Boeing gets its act together soon.

If this is really what you want, keep plugging away. Shotgun your apps. Improve your resume.

This is pretty much all that can be said. There are no shortcuts and no crystal balls.

pilotjogger

I appreciate the many responses. I often definitely get too wrapped up or worried about what I see online. Another worry I have is that there won't be upgrade opportunities for people like me coming up as sometimes you'll see comments here or places like reddit about how "the last captain for 15+ years will have been hired soon" or whatever.

Obviously these are all worries for years down the road for me.. But still. Like anyone else, I want my chance to upgrade too. I just wish I was born a few years earlier or was younger and could've taken advantage of the wave of the last few years. It really does, some days, feel as though if you weren't part of that, your career is effectively over/going to stagnate significantly and lead to guys making millions more just from lucky timing. it is what it is.. thanks.

60av8tor

Because that's what it is for the most part - luck and timimg. More so than almost any other career, the way this one works out for an individual has mostly to do with when you get into the game and the luck of when you're hired, and to whom, for your final resting place.

You're still entering at a good time - at least for now. And, at the end of the day, you can make yourself as attractive as possible to your employer, but that luck and timing, all other things equal,... there's about zero you're going to do about that.

Turbosina

I've flown with guys who spent 20 years doing everything possible to get to mainline (flying cancelled checks / night freight / Traffic Watch / pipeline patrol / right seat in a Metro making $12/hr), and finally made it to UAL right before 9/11...and were then promptly furloughed, briefly recalled, furloughed again and spent years out of the industry.

I also just flew with a 27-year-old newly minted Captain here at UAL, who spent ~6 mos at a regional before getting hired here. This person went to upgrade training a year after indoc. I didn't ask this individual's total time, but gauging from our discussion, I don't think it was much more than 2,500 hours or so.

Try to make any rational / logical sense out of this, and it will drive you insane. You're a CFI just past ATP minima and you're worried about upgrade at mainline? You can't let yourself think that way.

The hiring environment of the past few years has been so manic that some people seem to think that this is normal for the industry. Go and look at the fapa.aero site and see for yourself what happened in the Lost Decade. Some airlines hired literally nobody for almost a decade. You've now just witnessed the pendulum swinging in the other direction for the past few years. Presumably the next few years will be somewhere in the middle, with reasonable hiring and some growth. Or perhaps Putin will drop a tactical nuke and half of us will be out on furlough (among other rather more significant unpleasant events.)

There's just no way to know. All you can do is keep plugging away, building experience, networking, and moving forward. Focus on what you can control and try not to think about the rest of it. We've all been there — all of us — and at the end of the day, probably 98% of us would say that the struggle to get here was more than worth it.

Signed,
A Guy Who Didn't Get Hired At Mainline Until Age 50 But Who Has No Regrets

goinaround

Hey, the guys who get hired here young will have a very profitable career. But they won't have cool stories to tell.

11atsomto

see above for my 1.68 🇮🇳 rupees.