I was looking at Airline Pilot Central’s profile for United. On there it says 1000 turbine time for United as the minimums. Is it realistic to think that if I have 500 TT and fly a jet for a part 35 for another 1000 hours that United would hire me? Similar question for a regional 121, If I start with them at 1500 and get 1000 turbine is it realistic to think United would give me the time of day?
Thanks
Keith,
The short answer is no they would not. While those may be United’s min requirements they are far from competitive. The bottomline is this, United receives hundreds off applications practically daily from Regional Capts with 5-7000+hrs including 2-3000 turbine PIC. The mins are simply there for special cases and are the rare exception, not the norm.
Adam
Keith,
As Adam said, those minimums are there for the astronaut who has low time, but it is in the Space Shuttle, or even just military pilots in general as they do not fly as much as civilians do. For a civilian, most new hires have thousands of hours of flight time, typically with at least 1,000 hours of turbine PIC time. They have even started getting picky as to the type of turbine, they want to see big airplanes like RJs, Q400s, or the larger corporate jets. Time in small turbine airplanes like Caravans, King Airs, the smaller Citations, etc is not very highly regarded when it comes to interviewing.
Something else to consider, the airlines know that a lot of corporate FO jobs involve a lot of radio work and not much flying, especially when the principals are on board. They are also wise to the “Part 91, sole manipulator of the controls” way of logging flight time and a lot of airlines will not consider that as legitimate flight time.
I am not saying that corporate flying is not a way to get into the airlines, it certainly can be. However, the typical path for a civilian is through the regional airlines.
Chris