I am an inspiring & passionate aviator who plans on going to flight school in the next couple months to become an airline pilot! Only concern i have is i have a few misdemeanors that were dimissed and sealed (unlawful use of a vehicle, petit larceny,) when i was 16 years old. I am still concerned if it will deter me from chasing my dream. I was a stupid teenager and I have changed my life around and never been in any trouble since then. I am 23 now and i plan on being at the airlines when i’m 25-26. I dont want to stop chasing my dream because of this but i would like to know what to expect. Will this deter me from being an airline pilot? Any input? Thank you all !!
First off you can forget all this “sealed” nonsense. Airline Pilots require federal background checks and if you don’t think the govt knows EVERYTHING you’ve done in your life you’re sadly mistaken.
That said IF it’s only those 2 offenses AND you’ve been (and remain) squeaky clean you should be ok.
I think the question will be have you ever been arrested and you have been 4 times which is alot. If you truly take responsibility for your arrests your wouldn’t be saying thing like “1 was a false arrest” and “the law changed so I’ll be expunged” so Id work on sounding more remorseful and less like your making excuses and lucked out.
Again IF you remain clean you should be ok at least at the Regional level. The Majors don’t like arrests so you’ll need ALOT in the plus column to balance that out (4yr degree, no checkride busts, etc).
Bryan my friend its time for your first airline interview. Let’s go:
"So Bryan, we see you have a some misdemeanors from when your were younger but have remained clean which is good, BUT, we have DOZENS of applicants here who have no record whatsoever and 4yr degrees which we CLEARLY STATE as part of our preferred, competitive mins. So why should we choose you over one of them?:
“Bryan that’s a great answer and we do appreciate your enthusiasm and attitude but again EVERY applicant we have has earned all their ratings without checkride failures and have successfully trained their students to build their time. They also have met our competitive minimums which demonstrates to us that they don’t simply want to meet our minimums, but exceed them. A 4yr degree demonstrates to us a young person’s ability to dedicate themselves to a long term goal and successfully complete it which you don’t have. We also appreciate you seem to have cleaned up your act, but you do have an arrest record which means at some point in your life you had no respect for the rules which are critical in our industry. Unless you have something demonstrable for us to hang our hats in, we’re sorry but while words are important, we don’t see anything on the plus side that would make up for the deficiencies…”.
This lovely demonstration is best case scenario, you make it to the interview! With 4 arrests and no college degree your app probably won’t see the light of day at a major or legacy carrier unless all the other applicants with a college degree and no record dry up… then, you MAY get an interview. At that point, you’ll want all the prep services to help you out your absolute best foot forward.
You can’t change your past but you can change your future. Like Adam said, you need more points in your positive column! Although you might not be “planning on it”, you absolutely should. Without it, your career might not make it. Think of it as the points from the degree could MAYBE outweigh the record. Without it, you’re still heavily in the negative. Lots of people have good checkride pass records. That won’t be enough.
If i do… I should be done with school and instructing by the time i’m 26, which would be 10 years since my arrests. Would that still affect my career progression?
At this point you’re repeating yourself in the hopes of getting a different answer. You’ve got some blemishes and you’re unwilling to earn a degree. Those are 2 strikes against you and yes that will most likely effect your career progression and your chances of getting to a Major.
That said there are no guarantees in this career or any other. The real question is would you be content if your career only took you as far as the Regionals? If the answer is no then you should seriously think of this is something you want to do.
FYI, I’ve deleted some posts as it was simply bad advice. You are correct, the FAA only asks about arrests affecting driving. The airlines however want them all.