Would love to hear from students/instructors (or any 3rd party anecdotes; i.e. acquaintances you’ve met at ATP) that are currently trying to get hired, or recently hired, at any airlines. Is the market as thirsty as they say it is? And are the qualifications obtained through ATP enough, or are you finding that airlines are looking for other additional experience as well (i.e. retiring military pilots soaking up all the openings?; Airlines’ personal academies filling all their needs?, etc)?
I’m mostly interested in regional airlines, but info about other options/career paths after ATP would be great to hear too.
Anything helps. This curiously seems to be a difficult answer to find.
Hopefully some will chime in. But the reason you’re probably having trouble finding the info is because if you’re a newhire Regional pilot you’ve probably got better things to do than post on forums. Also keep in mind while ATPs (and any other flight school can provide the license and rating requirements needed for a Regional, one still needs to build the required 1500hrs time (usually built by instructing). Finally as for the military “soaking up all the openings” that’s simply an old myth. In the sixties 80% of all airline pilots came from the military but now it’s less than 30%. Further many military pilots have the ability to bypass the Regionals completely and go straight to a Major.
Again hopefully others will chime in but the fact the salaries have literally doubled in the last few years and the fact the Regionals are offering tens of thousands of dollars in hiring bonuses should give you some idea as to the shortage. If there was a surplus of pilots the airlines wouldn’t need to woo anyone.
The qualifications you receive through ATP are all you should possibly need to get hired at a regional airline, except of course the 1,500 total hours of flight time required by the FAA.
The airlines that do have their own academies (Republic’s Lift is the only one I am aware of) are very small and only turning out a handful of pilots, they really are not a factor.
Most military pilots will skip straight to the majors, so they are not really a factor in regional hiring either.
The most important things are keeping a clean record with both the FAA and the court system, and building your time and experience.