June 27, 2023 - At the time of writing this post, it's been nearly one year since the process started of applying to an airline. I have some downtime while sitting on reserve to catch up on documenting the journey.
After over two decades in the technology industry, the time was right for a career change. I've had the urge to do some professional flying and have had the flight hours and ATP experience requirements for a while and with the current hiring climate in the aviation industry, now was the time to make the switch. After doing some research on various flying jobs using airlinepilotcentral.com and individual company sites, I settled on applying to some fractional operations and a few regional airlines that either had a base near where I lived or had a short commute with a lot of flights to and from the major airport where I live to a domicile. With that criteria in mind, I started compiling my aviation resume and applying to various airlines using the airlines' respective websites or using airlineapps.com. Within a week I was getting emails for follow-up phone screens and to setup interview times/dates. For some of the airlines, the interview slots went fast so when it was all said and done the process took about a month to get all the interviews scheduled and completed.
The interview process was straight forward and with help from sites like aviationinterviews.com preparing for the type of questions that would be asked was helpful. One of the interviews required completing a 50 question technical exam that consisted of questions similar to the FAA ATP written exam. I was fortunate to get multiple offers and have the luxury of being able to choose the company that had a domicile that would keep my commuting to work to a minimum. For those unaware, about 50% of airplane pilots commute to work, so for example, someone living in Seattle may commute to Denver as a non-revenue passenger or ride in the cockpit jump seat in order to get to a place to start their flying day.
After accepting an offer with a regional airline, the next step was to choose a training class date. The class date is key to an airline pilot's seniority as it is the day that the starts your seniority ranking which will be used for domicile selection, trip selection, simulator schedule, etc. For me, I wanted to complete the year at my current job so I selected a class date near the end of December. This would allow me to finish out the year at my current employer, be home for Christmas and have a week or so to reset and prepare for the next career adventure ahead.
