Month: February 2009

Can Adding Turbine-time Help Me Get a Job?

Getting a job flying for the airlines is very competitive and always has been. It has become even more competitive lately, and you have to do whatever you can to make your resume stand out from the other resumes in that big stack lying on the recruiter’s desk. Having experience flying an aircraft powered by turbine engines is a definite plus.

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Becoming an Airline Pilot – Part IV: Finally, a few suggestions

No matter which path you decide to take to become an Airline Pilot, you must realize that there are many other very qualified individuals who also want that job. You need to make yourself as desirable as possible to the airlines. Paying attention to the following as you pursue your goals will make a world of difference when you get to that airline interview you have been working toward.

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Becoming an Airline Pilot – Part III: I have my Certificates, now what?

When you complete your flight training, you are going to have to gain some quality flight experience before an airline will hire you. Remember the research you did earlier to find the flight times required by the airline you want to work for? Your next move is to build the amount of flight time they require to be eligible to interview with them. There are a few ways to do that.

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Becoming An Airline Pilot – Part II: Certificates and ratings

Once you have made the decision to become a professional aviator, it’s time to begin flight training. Airlines require a pilot to have several FAA certificates and ratings before giving them an interview, so you should do some research on how you get those certificates

A good course of action is to plan to complete your flight training with not only the certificates and ratings that you need to fly for the airlines, but also the training and tools that you will need to continue to build quality flight time and experience.

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Becoming An Airline Pilot – Part I: Beginning

When an airline needs to hire pilots, they set out to hire talented pilots with good educations and loads of quality flight experience. Each airline has its own hiring qualifications, so a little research is in order to find the qualifications for the airline you want to work for. Qualifications also fluctuate according to the supply of pilots and the number of flying jobs available. When several airlines are hiring actively, the demand for pilots goes up and airlines often lower their flight time requirements to increase the number of resumes coming in.

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Flying the Line for AirTran Airways

Hello future airline pilots. My name is Michael Bailey and I currently fly the Boeing 717 for AirTran Airways, based in Atlanta, Georgia. I will be contributing to this blog periodically and am looking forward to sharing some of the things that I experience flying the line for AirTran.

I can relate to most of you because I wanted to be an airline pilot for as long as I can remember.

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I Just Got Hired by an Airline! Now what?

No matter what kind of equipment you have been flying or how you flew it before you were hired, your new airline will expect you to learn their flight procedures and adhere to them. As soon as you are hired, your airline will send you a box of manuals and expect you to know the material when you show up for ground school. This package will contain, among other things, a POH (Pilots Operating Handbook). The POH will describe every maneuver that you will be learning, and exactly how to do it, so that is a good place to start.

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