I am determined to become an airline pilot and will begin training shortly. I am a very deliberate person and have tons of questions. Here’s my most pressing one: How is Piedmont as an employer, are they often hiring and are there any other regionals with the same guaranteed move-up-to-American-after-being-a-captain-for-a-while plans.
The tipping point that pushed me up to wanting to go through with flight training was Piedmont’s great deal with American. Then I watched their company made documentary on the Dash 8 and I was just enamored with how much the employees seem to value the company and each other and how much they loved their equipment. I really want to work for them, so… maybe a Piedmont pilot can chat me up?
Recommend you visit the forum over at AirlinePilotCentral.com for airline specific questions. It’s not likely that you will find many on this forum who will “chat you up” about Piedmont as this is a website dedicated to answering questions specifically about how to become an airline pilot.
To my knowledge, there are not any Piedmont Airlines pilots on this forum. I can tell you that Envoy and PSA are also wholly-owned subsidiaries of American Airlines and offer the same flow-through programs.
To be honest, I think you are putting the cart before the horse here. It will take you at least two years to be airline-eligible and that is if you started flight training today. By then everything could have changed and some other airline might be the better one to apply to. I would encourage you to look at Envoy’s Cadet program and their partnership with ATP. In my opinion, that is the best option out there right now.
Piedmont, Envoy and PSA are all wholly owned AA Regionals and as such all are offering comparable flow-thru’s to American. Additionally all the Regionals are hiring aggressively right now and hopefully will be for some time.
That said you have yet to begin your training and while I appreciate you’re “deliberate” it’s really a moot point until you earn your licenses and ratings. I recommend you focus your attention on that for now.
Can’t say much about Piedmont, but all of the regionals are hiring right now, and will be for at least two more decades.
Flow programs are great, but don’t go all in on them. Flow programs have a lot of fine print and move in both directions.
If you haven’t already, you need to take an intro flight. That’s a better way to determine if flying is right for you than watching a company sponsored recruiting video.