UNITED EASES RULES TO LURE PILOTS
Apr 21, 2003
Author: Denver Post

UNITED EASES RULES TO LURE PILOTS
Tuesday, February 22, 2000
Section: BUSINESS
Page: C-01
BY JEFFREY LEIB
DENVER POST BUSINESS WRITER

U.S. airlines are hiring pilots at a record pace and some of the nation's largest carriers, including United Airlines, are relaxing hiring criteria to ensure a sufficient pool of qualified applicants.

Last month, airlines hired a record 1,645 pilots, and the industry is expected to take in as many as 20,000 new pilots for the entire year, according to Air Inc., an Atlanta firm that charts pilot hiring by the U.S. aviation industry.

The market has never been better for pilots, said Air Inc. President Kit Darby.

U.S. airlines have gone from a pilot glut only a few years ago to a pilot's market today, Darby said.

"It's a very tough environment" for recruiters, he said. "There's no lack of people (applying to carriers), but a real lack of qualified, experienced people."

For that reason, some carriers are easing hiring requirements, Darby said.

United Airlines has a pool of 7,000 qualified applicants, said company spokesman Joe Hopkins. Yet to boost that number, United recently made three adjustments to its hiring process:

Reducing the interval for applicants to reapply after being rejected from 12 to six months.

Waiving a fee required when submitting an application.

Reducing its vision requirement so the applicant's vision is correctable to 20/20, instead of having at least 20/100 vision correctable to 20/20.

Hopkins said the change in the vision policy is unrelated to a lawsuit filed by twin sisters who were rejected as pilot applicants at United.

Each had uncorrected vision that exceeded United's old 20/100 standard and the sisters claimed that the denial of an opportunity to train as pilots at United violated the Americans with Disabilities Act. Last summer, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected their argument.

Ironically, with United's change in policy, the sisters could not be automatically rejected from consideration as pilots.

"We want to be fully competitive in attracting the very best candidates out there," said Hopkins. In the past, United's pool of pilot applicants has totaled more than 10,000 people.

United also has about 10,000 active pilots, and all train at the company's flight-training center near Stapleton Airport.

Frontier Airlines Chief Pilot Hank Appleby said his carrier still is able to find far more applicants than it needs.

"We have not lowered our requirements," Appleby said.

The airline demands 2,000 hours of total flight time and 500 hours of experience with multi-engine aircraft.

The airline, which has about 220 pilots for its fleet of 22 Boeing 737 jets, also wants its applicants to have some air-carrier experience, typically with smaller commuter, charter or freight airlines.

"We're trying to develop ourselves as a destination airline instead of a stepping stone" to other carriers, Appleby said.

Pilots churning from one carrier to another has been common at all levels of the commercial-airline industry except the highest tier - the nation's top five to 10 carriers.

At Great Lakes Aviation, pilot turnover is extremely high, said Great Lakes Senior Vice President Dick Fontaine.

Great Lakes flies 19-seat Beechcraft turboprops as United Express from Denver International Airport. It trains 30 pilots a month, and acknowledges that small commuter airlines routinely lose a great many of their pilots to the major carriers, Fontaine said.

Great Lakes is a training ground for the majors, and the high cost of constantly training and then losing pilots simply is an added expense small commuter airlines must bear, he said.

The commuter carrier, which has 350 pilots, wants applicants with 1,500 hours of total flight time, including as much as 400 to 500 hours of multi-engine experience, said Fontaine. Up to now, the airline has not had trouble getting pilots with that kind of experience.

At American Eagle, the commuter arm of American Airlines, applicants must have 1,000 total hours of flight time with at least 200 hours of that in multi-engine aircraft, said company spokesman Mark Slitt.

"We plan to hire more than 500 pilots this year, and we don't have any problem finding recruits," Slitt said.

Even though American Eagle's requirement of 1,000 total flight hours is down from a higher level in the past, candidates for the airline's pilot positions typically average about 1,700 hours, said Slitt.

"Not all 1,000 hours (of flight time) are created equal," Slitt said.

Slitt and others say some pilot applicants to the commercial carriers come with a great deal of piloting experience in challenging conditions.

Fontaine of Great Lakes Aviation, agreed. As his carrier considers new applicants, flying freight out of Chicago's busy O'Hare International Airport at night and in extreme weather counts for more than merely building flight hours as a daytime flight instructor, he said.

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this article, I am not alone. The Air Line Pilots' Association, the largest pilot union in the country, recently printed an article in its national magazine, Air Line Pilot. The article was titled, "Pull Up, Pilot Shortage Looming". Written by Trevor Nash, the editor of CAT, The Journal for Civil Aviation Training, the article observes "the current system [pilot-sourcing chain] is becoming ever more squeezed as general aviation becomes more expensive, as governments fail to support pilot training, and as our bright young people are increasingly pressured to undertake other professions in a globally growing economy." The thrust of the argument by Mr. Nash is that airlines "to take a much closer look at their future pilot requirements" and get more involved with raising standards.