Which Regional to go To

[Python]

The MTPIC requirement is really just an avatar for the type of decisionmaking and airmanship the airlines want. It presumes a civlian-background pilot, who won't really get into the types of complex environments and fast-paced decisionmaking situations until they get into a job that flies a jet or turboprop multiengine airplane.

The airlines know that a single seat fighter guy has most every hour spent in the cockpit hand-flying, doing complex multitasking and fast decisionmaking at the same time. That's high quality airmanship that compares to the type of experience that other pilots get at a similar point in their careers in multiengine jets and turboprops.

Generally, they look at primary military instructor time very similarly.

As an aside, I've never understood why the airlines didn't value the same type of airmanship that comes from rotorheads, but in another thread over on another forum recently, an Army helo dude told me it stems from the fact that in the past, many helos did not do much in the way of IFR or complex instrument flying. Apparently some of the older helos weren't even certified to fly IFR at all.

Thanks. That was very informative. I have both that civilian background and the single seat fighter thing going for me, so hopefully that pans out when I apply to the show some day.

 

[ChuckM]

Even if you're logging it under the assumptions of Part 1? I thought that was the way to make FPT time work for you when you didn't sign. Or is your issue because Clown aircraft are single-piloted?

Both the fact that the t-34 by definition is single piloted, and that at the time of instruction the SNA is not commercially rated. Nor are they even rated to be PIC. The safe for solo stamp is at best an endorsement... and further, I would say that the mil comp isn't even an option to us until we complete the advanced syllabus. That's the point at which the FAA says we're pilots.

Once fully rated and typed (for a helicopter guy it would be post NATOPS check in The FRS) you can utilize the Part one definition for sole manipulator. obviously Solo flights are listed as well and thusly are PIC before being rated.

 

[HokiePilot]

SkyWest hasn't flown the Braslilia since 2014, but they are a good company that is likely to survive a very turbulent period for the regionals.

Some questions first for @HokiePilot:
- How much total time do you have?
- How much multi/turbine PIC time do you have?

As others have said or alluded to, the three things you should care about when picking a regional are bases, upgrade time, and pay/sechedules. You also need to consider things like bonuses and flow, but they shouldn't be anything more than a tie-breaker. In some instances, the flow program can be the *loser* in the tie breaker.

Bases:
Why do bases matter? Because your commute is going to be the #1 contributor/detractor from your overall quality of life as a regional pilot. A good commute to an average job is superior to a hard commute to a great job. I'll tell you my deal: I live in Vegas, and I retired from the USAF non-current and knew I was going to have to do some regional time. The "west coast" regionals currently in play are Skywest, Compass, and Horizon. From a commuting standpoint, here's how they stacked up:
- SKW: Junior bases were ORD and MSP, but 6-12 months down the road I could hold KSFO, which is an easy 1-leg commute from KLAS
- Compass: Junior base is KLAX, which is an easy 1-leg commute from Vegas
- Horizon: Junior base was Medford (not sure what it is today--that equation has changed a lot in the last 2 years), but Seattle and Portland were both attainable in 6-12 months. Medford is a 2-leg commute from Vegas.
Winner: Compass

Upgrade time:
Your objective is to get over to the left seat as soon as you can to both start building MTPIC time (if you don't all ready have the "magic 1,000 hours" of MTPIC), as well as make yourself eligible for other qualifications like Instructor or Line Check Airman. For me, as a fighter dude, I all ready had 2,500+ MTPIC, but I saw upgrade as my Plan B if I didn't get hired by a career destination airline. Here's how those three shook out (again, this is in 2015, so numbers are different today):
- SkyWest: at the time, something like an 8-year upgrade
- Compass: 6-12 months for someone with the requisite minimum qualifications. As a military guy with more than 500 hours in military multi-pilot airplanes (King Airs) I only needed 500 hours of 121 SIC time in order to meet upgrade qualifications. In reality, I could have upgraded at 9 months.
- Horizon: 4-7 years at the time to upgrade.
Winner: Compass

Pay/Schedules:
This wasn't very important for me, because I was planning on only being at the regionals for 2 years or less, and I had a military retirement to buffer the pain. I figured I could suffer through just about anything for 2 years, because I'd been financially planning on it for years and built up my savings and had no debt.

Pay is a moving target, though. When I was applying, SKW paid $30/hour, Compass $26/hour, and Horizon $31. SKW and CPZ have both bumped up their pay in the last year (and, of course, the AA wholly-owned regionals PSA/Envoy/Peidmont have bumped theirs up to $40-something a couple months ago). Given how things are changing, if you're at a regional more than a year, chances are that pay is going to go up.

There is not really much variation between airlines with respect to schedules. Bigger airplanes (E170/E175, CRJ-700/900) are going to fly longer legs and less legs per day, generally, than smaller airplanes (CRJ-2, Dash-8s, etc), but that's only a marginal difference. It is true that the real QOL is to be found pretty deep down in the work rules, trip rigs, etc, but honestly I don't know that it is worth drilling that deep to make a decision. All regional schedules suck ass for junior guys, so all the flavors of shit still taste like shit.

Flow/Bonuses:
Again, not a player in my decision matrix because I was just looking to get re-current, then head off to a career airline. There was only one airline with a bonus, Endeavor, and required you to be there a while to get it. The bonuses are attractive, especially at the AA wholly-owneds. The problem with bonuses is that they are not enduring (only available one time, or for a couple years, etc) and since they are not actual contract provisions, they can be rescinded at any time. Be careful picking based on "pay" that is actually a bunch of conditional bonuses thrown in on top of regular pay. That being said, as has been posted, some of those bonus-enhanced airlines have first-year pay approaching $60K, which is awesome.

Flow can also be a double-edged sword. The problem used to be that if you worked at an airline with a flow agreement, the mainline partner would not interview or hire you out of seniority order. For a military-background guy, that's a negative, because you're going to be eligible to get "the call" before your seniority list civvie peers. My understanding is that this provision has been removed from the AA flow agreements now. As others have said, it is a valid "plan B" if you don't get a call to The Show, but realized it could be a *decade* before you actually flow to AA.

Thanks! This is exactly what I am looking for.

I have about 2700 total.
I have around 15 hours of Multi time. I'm working on it.
I'm working on building up my airplane PIC time by flying a tail-wheel plane. If I am time building, I might as well build tail-wheel time as well.

 

[DanMa1156]

Damn. I don't know if this thread makes me happy or saddens me. I begged and pleaded for VTs, got HTs and have a family to support. It seems like the airlines may be a bridge too far for me, save moving in with my in-laws.

 

[Gatordev]

Both the fact that the t-34 by definition is single piloted, and that at the time of instruction the SNA is not commercially rated. Nor are they even rated to be PIC. The safe for solo stamp is at best an endorsement... and further, I would say that the mil comp isn't even an option to us until we complete the advanced syllabus. That's the point at which the FAA says we're pilots.

Once fully rated and typed (for a helicopter guy it would be post NATOPS check in The FRS) you can utilize the Part one definition for sole manipulator. obviously Solo flights are listed as well and thusly are PIC before being rated.

Copy all, except one thing. Administratively, how does does a FAM-9X complete pilot differ from a NATOPS complete pilot in the eyes of the FAA? The type-rating would have no value on the FW side, I would think. Otherwise you're still a commercially/instrument rated pilot either way.

Or to ask this another way, let's say there exists a dual-piloted FW aircraft that weighs less than 12.5K. Why couldn't you log PIC time in that as a FAM-9X guy who is flying as a co-pilot (under Part 1)? Just trying to expand a bit on what you were saying for my own education.

 

[HackerF15E]

I have about 2700 total.
I have around 15 hours of Multi time. I'm working on it.
I'm working on building up my airplane PIC time by flying a tail-wheel plane. If I am time building, I might as well build tail-wheel time as well.

Okay, so your picture for the regionals is a little different; you're going to have to be at one long enough to build both normal multi time, but also multi/turbine/PIC. In even the best case scenario, that probably means 3 years at a regional (figure 700-ish to 900-ish hours per year, depending on how hard you want to work).

So, I'd pay a little closer attention to upgrade times and pay than I did; you're going to have to live under the pay for longer than I did, and you're going to want/need to get over to the left seat as soon as you can (as that's your key to getting hired at a major).

Remember that upgrade times are a moving target -- they're only true "today", and change based on a lot of different factors that you don't have control over, e.g how fast guys off the top of the seniority list are getting hired and leaving, how the company is expanding or contracting, how hiring occurred at the company before you (was there a gap in hiring where not many people were hired during a particular time period, or was there a hiring spree where there are a lot of people with about the same date of hire). The "fast upgrade" train can start, stop, speed up, or slow down at any given time. You can make yourself smart about these factors and make educated guesses about some of the airlines, but some of it you'll have to simply take a leap of faith and hope it works out for you.

Also keep in mind that you're not a typical regional pilot: your military experience is going to put you in a different hiring category at the major airlines. Yes, "primarily" they're going to look at you like a "regional pilot", but the substantial military experience is going to separate you quickly from your peers, both as an FO and as a Captain, in the eyes of the hiring airlines. Your path *out* of the regionals is going to be much shorter than your all-civilian classmates in your regional newhire class.

So, just a couple thoughts based on my current understanding of the different regionals:

- Upgrade times are coming down everywhere - except the places where they're going up. The places that had lightning-fast upgrades in 2015 (Mesa, Compass, PSA) are growing longer, and the places that had upgrades that took "forever" (Skywest, Envoy, Horizon, ExpressJet, etc) are coming down, and things are stabilizing. On the low end, upgrade times are sitting about 2 years, and on the top end they're in the 4-8 year range. The lightning-fast upgrade shops had company-specific market forces that drove their quick upgrade times; Mesa got a bunch of new E175s, Compass had several hundred flows to Delta leave and 20 new jets on property, and PSA had a bunch of new airplanes. I haven't heard about many shops that are currently super-fast, but I believe that CommutAir was on the cusp of getting a bunch of E145s out of the desert, and that expansion might fuel fast upgrades.

- The AA wholly-owneds are the kings of pay/compensation right now. Their pay-rate hike and bonuses are multi-year, so for a guy that is going to spend a couple years at a regional, that should help your bottom line for a bit. That being said, things in the compensation department have changed dramatically in the last year or two in reaction to the pilot shortage. I predict there will be more money thrown at the problem at other regionals, which could make them as good or better than the AA WOs. FWIW, the upgrade times at PSA and Peidmont are going to be a lot faster than Envoy, even though they're all paying about the same. Envoy is just a big, old seniority list that has a lot of lifers on it and thus slower movement when you're on the bottom of the list.

- Bases don't seem to be opening/closing/moving all that much from what I'm reading/hearing, so that's sort of static at the moment...but that is one of the least static aspects of the regional airlines. Almost all of them play musical-bases annually as contracts with the majors change, plus the majors shift regional flying around frequently and the regionals have no control of that. At Compass, routes changed almost monthly while I was there -- Delta and American (who we flew for) were constantly opening service to new cities as test cases, and when it was really successful, they'd move that route over to a mainline jet and take it from Compass. Compass is a good example of what can happen to a regional based on contracts with mainline partners: it used to be an exclusively east/northeast airline with bases in MSP, DTW, and MEM. Today, the company has become a west coast airline -- it is still headquartered in MSP, but the biggest base is LAX and the only other base is SEA.

 

[HackerF15E]

Both the fact that the t-34 by definition is single piloted, and that at the time of instruction the SNA is not commercially rated. Nor are they even rated to be PIC. The safe for solo stamp is at best an endorsement... and further, I would say that the mil comp isn't even an option to us until we complete the advanced syllabus. That's the point at which the FAA says we're pilots.

Once fully rated and typed (for a helicopter guy it would be post NATOPS check in The FRS) you can utilize the Part one definition for sole manipulator. obviously Solo flights are listed as well and thusly are PIC before being rated.

Since the T-34 and T-6 are turbine powered, by FAA standards, a "type rating" is required. Back about 1999, I had a ruling from one of the FSDOs that effectively said that when you get your wings, that's when they consider you to have a "type" (in my case, that was for the T-37 and T-38), and thus any student time that was not solo could not be called PIC.

But, solo time definitely *is* PIC time by any definition.

 

[Gatordev]

Interesting. I guess I hadn't heard the "turbine = Type rating" thing before.

 

[zippy]

Thought type ratings are require for large aircraft (defined as greater than 12,500lbs) or any turbo-jet aircraft regardless of weight, or any other aircraft the FAA requires it from.

I flew both the T-34c and T-6B, neither got me a type rating, nor did the T-44A, which is a King Air 90.

I know guys who got he BE-200 type rating from flying the TC-12 because they could appearantly show it weighing in more than 12,500lbs in NATOPS.

Decent article on the subject.

https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all-news/2012/june/pilot/whats-your-type

 

[ChuckM]

Copy all, except one thing. Administratively, how does does a FAM-9X complete pilot differ from a NATOPS complete pilot in the eyes of the FAA? The type-rating would have no value on the FW side, I would think. Otherwise you're still a commercially/instrument rated pilot either way.

Or to ask this another way, let's say there exists a dual-piloted FW aircraft that weighs less than 12.5K. Why couldn't you log PIC time in that as a FAM-9X guy who is flying as a co-pilot (under Part 1)? Just trying to expand a bit on what you were saying for my own education.

So, by definition the "safe for solo" flight and stamp are not a full NATOPS check ride. An IP can attest to this as the NATOPS check entails all kinds of stall/spin/upset recoveries. So, while the FSDO may not know the difference I would guarantee the FAA has adjudicated this at some point.

As it stands, the S in SNA is different than Naval Aviator in the eyes of the FAA. You are a student until you are not, e.g. Winging. The 9X completer is neither a safety observer, or qualified pilot in category and class acting as sole manipulator in an aircraft requires a copilot or SIC.

So, when you go to the FRS you are a full up commercial pilot and at the NATOPS check you are quasi type rated by the Navy. (The FAA will gladly honor this) It's an order of operations thing. The FAA won't let you mil comp anything in flight school before winging. They have benchmarks they have established, for a legitimate reason.

Let all be honest too... were you acting as PIC flying the T-34 or were you quite at the mercy of your instructor for all decisions?

If Envoy wants to allow it, it's on them. BUT I would also offer that it's on the individual who is representing a certain amount of experience when submitting the signed paperwork to the examiner.

FWIW there are several business Jets (not turboprop-no type rating required just for a turboprop) that are less than 12.5 but require a type as a function of Jet propulsion. So the hypothesis you mentioned is feasible but again I would argue that the 9X completer wouldn't have that type rating and therefore would not meet the definition of SIC in that jet.

 

[Gatordev]

I get what you're saying, but actual references would be helpful. At the end of the day, very little of this helps me career-wise, especially for what I want to do (non-COMAIR), but understanding the rules (FARs or otherwise) is helpful in the long run for utilizing the system/rules in a way that makes one more competitive (for whatever).

 

[ChuckM]

I get what you're saying, but actual references would be helpful. At the end of the day, very little of this helps me career-wise, especially for what I want to do (non-COMAIR), but understanding the rules (FARs or otherwise) is helpful in the long run for utilizing the system/rules in a way that makes one more competitive (for whatever).

Various references below. Plus I want to say there was a huge thread recently on air warriors about logging time. Obviously if you go to the FARs referenced in the below articles and read the refs yourself that may be helpful as well. (Edit: Re-read this last sentence after hitting post. Not meant condescendingly. Obviously you are well read on the matter, I just usually gain perspective reading source documents)

This from Sheppard air:
http://www.sheppardair.com/download/fillin8710-1.pdf

Aviationbull:
http://www.aviationbull.com/2015/oct/19/military-pilot-logbook-conversion

Airlinepilotcentral.com has several threads.

AOPA:
https://www.aopa.org/training-and-s...-cross-country-time/logbooks-and-logging-time

 

[HAL Pilot]

Turbine dies not mean a type rating is required. I flew Twin Otters and Piaggio P-180s under both 121 and 135 without type ratings. I also flew a King Air part 91 without a type.

12,500 max takeoff weight is the limit for no type rating. 12,501 = type rating.

 

[Gatordev]

Thanks. I'll do some reading this week.

 

[HokiePilot]

How much choice should aircraft type take into account? I'm interested in Piedmont because of nice base locations. They fly mostly Dash-8s though. Is that going to put me at a disadvantage applying to a major? Turboprop vs Turbofan?