In recent years, are former U.S. military pilots able to join the major airlines directly?

[SamuelA]

I was talking to a friend last night who was in the Air Force academy with a pilot slot, but lost it due to a minor medical issue. He’s about to start work at a regional airline and has to do about 5 years there to rack up enough “121 hours” (hours in a turbine-driven passenger transport aircraft) to have a good chance of being hired at a major airline.

He was comparing stats to his Air Force classmates, who just now are getting to fly actual military mission aircraft instead of military trainers, and I wondered something.

Looking at the list of active military aircraft, C-17 pilots who might be tasked with “flying rubber dogshit out of Hong Kong” are flying an aircraft very similar to one of the older airliners. And at least on some missions, there’s troops in the back, flight attendants - the mission is almost identical to being an airline pilot.

Assuming a C-17 pilot did the minimum military commitment (about 8 years for Air Force pilots coming from the Air Force academy), would they be able to join a major airline directly? (after completing a couple month course in a specific passenger jet, of course)

And second, I also noticed that the air force, surprisingly, has far more combat aircraft than it does most types of utility aircraft. Do major airlines consider flight time in a fighter exactly the same as flight time in a C-17 or C-5 for deciding whether to pick up a military pilot?

I wondered if this could create a situation where the kids at the top of the class sometimes sign up for transport aircraft so they can get a more favorable airline job sooner…

[Kent_Clark]

The FAA requires pilots to have a “type rating” on a specific kind of aircraft before they’re allowed to fly it.

Looking at this list of civilian and military type ratings, relatively few modern military models actually have a U.S. military equivalent – mostly the Boeing models 727, 737, 747 and 757, and the old DC-9 and DC-10, which have mostly been phased out of service.

Although a military pilot might have substantially the same duties and “job description” as a civilian pilot, if they don’t know the aircraft, they don’t get to fly it. The same, I’m sure, applies to a C-17 pilot who thinks it might be cool to fly a C-5.

[Velocity]

@SamuelA

I wondered if this could create a situation where the kids at the top of the class sometimes sign up for transport aircraft so they can get a more favorable airline job sooner…

I’ve read that the students at the top of their Air Force or Navy classes almost invariably will pick fighters anyway; that the fighter slots are always the most coveted. Maybe LSLGuy can chime in and set us straight.

[TSBG]

LSL Guy hasn’t been around for a while, hope he comes back.

[Bijou_Drains]

a lot of airline pilots start out in the military. The airlines really like to hire those guys. But there are also guys who get flight training in other places .

Military pilots have a better chance of going directly to Delta, American , United, major airlines. Guys who were not in the military might have to start out with the smaller carriers and then move up to bigger carriers.

This guy went from a 15 year NFL career to a commercial pilot.

Jim Ritcher - Wikipedia

[Turble]

A Reuters story from just a few days ago:

U.S. airlines tap army helicopter pilots to ease shortage

CHICAGO (Reuters) - U.S. Army pilot Shaun Perez spent ten hours flying an Apache helicopter over Afghanistan, providing gun cover for Special Forces soldiers on the ground as they hunted for high-value targets, guns and weapons.

Returning to his base at dawn, he donned a fresh uniform before shutting himself into a small room to secure the next stage of his career - as a commercial airline pilot.

He would win the job in a video interview that day in August 2017, joining hundreds of other U.S. military helicopter pilots who have taken attractive offers from domestic airlines trying ease a global pilot shortage.

[Richard_Pearse]

@kunilou

The FAA requires pilots to have a “type rating” on a specific kind of aircraft before they’re allowed to fly it.

Looking at this list of civilian and military type ratings, relatively few modern military models actually have a U.S. military equivalent – mostly the Boeing models 727, 737, 747 and 757, and the old DC-9 and DC-10, which have mostly been phased out of service.

Although a military pilot might have substantially the same duties and “job description” as a civilian pilot, if they don’t know the aircraft, they don’t get to fly it. The same, I’m sure, applies to a C-17 pilot who thinks it might be cool to fly a C-5.

That applies to a civilian pilot as well though. A pilot who starts working for an airline flying B737s wouldn’t normally already have a B737 rating.

[mhendo]

A friend of mine from high school went through the Australian Defence Force Academy to the Royal Australian Air Force, where he flew transport aircraft. I think he mainly flew the C130 Hercules.

After about 12 or 14 years in the air force, he moved to QANTAS, where he flies the 747 on international routes to Europe and the US. I’m pretty sure he went straight from the air force to QANTAS, although I never asked him what sort of transition requirements there were.

I had lunch with him a while back, and one thing he told me that I found quite interesting is that, at airlines like QANTAS, you’re basically a Boeing pilot or an Airbus pilot. I had always assumed that you’re either a big plane pilot or a smaller plane pilot. So, I assumed that, as long as the planes were comparable in size and maneuverability, a pilot would basically be able to move back and forth between them. So, if you normally fly a Boeing 737, then you could also fly an Airbus A320, and if you normally fly a Boeing 747, then you could also fly an Airbus A380. But he said that moving to a smaller Boeing would be much easier than moving to a comparably sized Airbus.

Apparently the cockpit differences in layout and controls and processes are such that it’s not so easy to move back and forth, and that many (most?) airlines require that you be one or the other. He said that if he were forced to fly an Airbus, he’s reasonably confident that he could get it into the air, and land without creating a flaming fireball, but that it would be different enough from flying the Boeing that he would not feel very confident.

[md2000]

My nephew is an airline pilot who went up the non military route, from instructing in 2-seat props to flying small prop commuters to now large jets. He couldn’t get pilot in the USAF because they had other applicants with perfect eyesight. As a side note the fellow who taught me to fly also went the non-military route.

Even so, you need specific training plus if US rules are same as Canadian you cannot even be a commercial pilot without 200 hours flying and most airlines I think want well beyond the bare minimum. Then, every aircraft requires as mentioned type certification which means several hours in a simulator at minimum. Maybe someone can indicate whether there is an additional requirement for airline pilot.

Without the military’s help typically becoming a real pilot takes years and tens of thousands of dollars. ( ah, those were the days… my private pilot license cost 1700; today it’s well over !0,000)

Plus I’m guessing that pilot hours in the military are assigned according to need and scheduling, not to enhance career opportunities. So it’s possible the fellow had the certifications but needed the minimum flying time still.

[Richard_Pearse]

@mhendo

I had lunch with him a while back, and one thing he told me that I found quite interesting is that, at airlines like QANTAS, you’re basically a Boeing pilot or an Airbus pilot. I had always assumed that you’re either a big plane pilot or a smaller plane pilot. So, I assumed that, as long as the planes were comparable in size and maneuverability, a pilot would basically be able to move back and forth between them. So, if you normally fly a Boeing 737, then you could also fly an Airbus A320, and if you normally fly a Boeing 747, then you could also fly an Airbus A380. But he said that moving to a smaller Boeing would be much easier than moving to a comparably sized Airbus.

Apparently the cockpit differences in layout and controls and processes are such that it’s not so easy to move back and forth, and that many (most?) airlines require that you be one or the other. He said that if he were forced to fly an Airbus, he’s reasonably confident that he could get it into the air, and land without creating a flaming fireball, but that it would be different enough from flying the Boeing that he would not feel very confident.

You might be taking him a bit literally I think. There are some philosophical differences between Airbus and Boeing design, but there is absolutely nothing stopping a pilot moving from one to the other. You will go through an intensive training process regardless of which fleets you are moving between.

Normally you fly a single aircraft type, not a brand. There are some types that are covered by a single rating but even then you would still require “differences training” to go from one to the other.

Pilots in Qantas can easily go from Airbus to Boeing and vice versa. They just need to bid for the fleet they want and once they have the required seniority and a course is running, they will get the job.

He may have been talking about Boeing pilots not wanting to transition to Airbus and vice versa because it’s supposedly a more difficult transition, but this barrier is just in the minds of the pilots, it’s not real.

[Velocity]

How does a civilian or military pilot get trained on a particular airline aircraft (say, 777) for the first time? Entirely on simulators before first actual 777 flight? No airlines operate “trainer” 777s.

[Velocity]

@Richard_Pearse

You might be taking him a bit literally I think. There are some philosophical differences between Airbus and Boeing design, but there is absolutely nothing stopping a pilot moving from one to the other. You will go through an intensive training process regardless of which fleets you are moving between.

Normally you fly a single aircraft type, not a brand. There are some types that are covered by a single rating but even then you would still require “differences training” to go from one to the other.

Pilots in Qantas can easily go from Airbus to Boeing and vice versa. They just need to bid for the fleet they want and once they have the required seniority and a course is running, they will get the job.

He may have been talking about Boeing pilots not wanting to transition to Airbus and vice versa because it’s supposedly a more difficult transition, but this barrier is just in the minds of the pilots, it’s not real.

Is it as hard as, say, going from Android to IPhone or Windows to Mac?

[Melbourne]

@Richard_Pearse

You might be taking him a bit literally I think. There are some philosophical differences between Airbus and Boeing design, but there is absolutely nothing stopping a pilot moving from one to the other. You will go through an intensive training process regardless of which fleets you are moving between.

Normally you fly a single aircraft type, not a brand. There are some types that are covered by a single rating but even then you would still require “differences training” to go from one to the other.
.

Or he may be qualified to fly both 747-400 and 787-9 and be rostered to both. They stopped flying 767’s years ago, but obviously when they first got delivery, they would have been using all 747 qualified pilots.

[Llama_Llogophile]

@Velocity

How does a civilian or military pilot get trained on a particular airline aircraft (say, 777) for the first time? Entirely on simulators before first actual 777 flight? No airlines operate “trainer” 777s.

These days it’s usually just sim training. Your first flight in the real plane is a regular revenue flight. That’s exactly what I went through as a first-time airline pilot some years ago.

In that situation, with the ink still drying on your new type rating, you fly for several weeks in IOE (Initial Operating Experience) with a qualified training captain. He or she helps you get up to speed and evaluates your progress. If everything is OK you are then signed off and released to fly the line.

I found the process a bit surreal, but was fortunate to have an excellent training captain. He went out of his way to make me feel comfortable and taught me the differences between what we learned in sim training and regular line flying. It’s funny to think about, but you really have to learn to fly the plane under “normal” circumstances. In the sim you focus almost exclusively on emergency scenarios. So when I got to IOE I was fully prepared to fly it down to minimums in crap weather with one of the engines on fire, but I didn’t know how to smoothly execute a a purely visual approach (I could cobble it together from normal flying skills, but it took some real world know-how to make it look and feel good). They didn’t really do that in the sim.

[Richard_Pearse]

@Velocity

How does a civilian or military pilot get trained on a particular airline aircraft (say, 777) for the first time? Entirely on simulators before first actual 777 flight? No airlines operate “trainer” 777s.

It depends on the company to some extent.

The basics are similar across the board but the details can vary a bit. Depending on the certification standard of the simulator, the airline’s training policy, and the local aviation authority’s rules, you may or may not have to fly some circuits in the real aircraft before being let loose on unsuspecting passengers.

When I did my Dash 8 rating I had to fly circuits prior to my first “line” flight. When I did my BAe146 rating I did not have to fly any circuits and went straight from simulator to line flying with a training captain and a plane load of passengers. When I did my Avro RJ differences training (same type as the BAe146) I had to do some circuits because the company didn’t have an RJ simulator. I’ve recently done an A320 rating and was flying passengers straight from the simulator.

@Velocity

Is it as hard as, say, going from Android to IPhone or Windows to Mac?

Impossible to quantify. I would say that going from Windows to Mac is easy. Other people struggle with changing habits. I suspect that people who learn by rote without acquiring a deeper understanding of what is happening “under the hood” will have the hardest time learning any new technology.

@Melbourne

Or he may be qualified to fly both 747-400 and 787-9 and be rostered to both. They stopped flying 767’s years ago, but obviously when they first got delivery, they would have been using all 747 qualified pilots.

I don’t fly for Qantas so I’m not about to say they don’t do this, but I’d be very surprised if they did. I know that Cathay have pilots dual endorsed on the A330 and A350, but Airbus have designed those types to be almost identical from a pilot’s perspective. Where I work, A320 pilots do not fly any other type (other than A321 but that is a different variant, not a different type), B787 pilots do not fly any other type and B777 pilots do not fly any other type. There could be senior training / management pilots who are briefly dual endorsed but on the whole it doesn’t happen.

When a new type is introduced, pilots will be trained on the new type and although they will hold a rating for their old type they will no longer be rostered to fly it, and they will no longer be considered “current” on the old type. My old company started operating E190s as well as BAe146s. When we got the first E190, some BAe146 pilots went and got trained on the E190, they then trained other 146 pilots to fly the E190. Those new E190 pilots never flew the 146 again, it was a clean break from one to the other.

The problem with having pilots flying B747 and B787 or any other combination is that it doubles the training load. Instead of 2 - 3 sim sessions per year they will have 4 - 6 sessions. Instead of one annual route check they will have two.

I’m not saying it is never done, as I say Cathay have pilots flying the A330 and A350, but typically this requires the types to be similar enough that a check on one will count as a check on the other and you can then have a training system that alternates between the types. The B757 and B767 had this kind of commonality and I believe B787 and B777 share a type rating, but in my company at least, pilots are not allowed to fly both types.

[md2000]

@Velocity

How does a civilian or military pilot get trained on a particular airline aircraft (say, 777) for the first time? Entirely on simulators before first actual 777 flight? No airlines operate “trainer” 777s.

As others have said - simulator, then as second in command with an experienced pilot who is already type certified. Unless it’s a brand new aircraft, there’s someone else with experience.

If it’s the first of its kind, then Boeing or Airbus test pilots can give the first few pioneers real-life experience after some simulator training; then they go back as the masters to get any other pilots up to speed (after those pilots have simulator training). A commercial plane that costs tens of thousands an hour to operate is built along with simulators, and acquiring a new type of plane is a significant investment all around. Also note that not many aircraft are horribly different than previous versions.

I assume a Dash 8 size of craft is not so expensive to operate, an airline could probably afford to give the trainee pilot getting type-certified some circuits on it.

As for test pilots, they probably work their way up - but most aircraft have flight characteristics that are allegedly predictable, so simulators can be built that model the behaviour. I assume the test pilots participate in development, they don’t arrive at a new aircraft with zero previous knowledge about it. Engineers already have pretty good guesses about acceleration, rotation speed, climb velocity, turn radius, approach and landing speeds, etc. Hopefully there are no major surprises like shakes or difficult controls; after all, most new commercial aircraft are flight-wise pretty similar to existing.

I assume too, this is the issue with Boeing vs. Airbus - the control layout and handling characteristics of each company are specific and relatively the same from model to model, whereas it is a bigger adjustment to go from one company to the other.

[spifflog]

(A former Navy guy who still works in the Navy in the Pentagon).

As many have stated, most pilots want to fly pointy end planes. So by and large, the best pilots go in that direction.

Some pilots are joining the military with an eye toward the airlines, so they’ll try transport in the military. The two problems with that is it’s a long time from flight school to post military, so that’s a long to time do that for a pay off at the end. And in the military (at least in the Navy), flying “the bus with wings” to set yourself up on the back end isn’t viewed all that well.

Also as has been pointed out, right now the airlines are hiring like crazy. It’s cyclical of course, but right now with more jobs, and cliff retirement of many pilots, it’s very lucrative to transition to the civilian world right now.

If you don’t have the proper type / model / series that the airlines need (and many have it) you can sim the hell out of it and get up to speed pretty quickly.

[Llama_Llogophile]

@md2000

As others have said - simulator, then as second in command with an experienced pilot who is already type certified. Unless it’s a brand new aircraft, there’s someone else with experience.

I’ll point out that there is such a thing as being hired as a “street captain”. Meaning, you are a captain immediately, possibly in a plane you’ve never flown before.

I’ve never done that, but I know people who have, both in the airlines and charter world. But I’m on the cautious side - I prefer to upgrade after having flown as an SIC for a while.

It also creates an interesting dynamic in the cockpit, which is that the first officer may be far more experienced in the aircraft than the captain. I’ve been on both sides of that equation for various reasons, and I believe it largely falls on the first officer to know their role and help the new captain along.

[Velocity]

@spifflog

right now the airlines are hiring like crazy. It’s cyclical of course, but right now with more jobs, and cliff retirement of many pilots, it’s very lucrative to transition to the civilian world right now.

Boeing projects a need for nearly 800,000 airline pilots in the two decades ahead (not sure if this means ***additional ***new pilots, or merely that the total pilot workforce across the planet will need to be around this figure - and that there will be some gap in the workforce - sure would appreciate clarification about it.) Although I’ve read that some pilot unions challenge the notion that this shortage is that dire.

[spifflog]

It’s a problem for us. We had one guy in our office that left at 17 years - three years short of a lifetime pension - to fly for the airlines now.