Is there a preference for airlines between military pilots and those trained elsewhere?

Question

Obviously an ex military pilot should have more hours right out of the gate but might not be experienced with the civilian industry, is there a preference when hiring to take someone who came up through commuter airlines or someone trained to fly military planes originally?

Answer 1

There's no advantage to being a military pilot. I had to get out of the military to really start building time. You can be in the military for ten years and come out with about three thousand hours. By then most civilian pilots who work  at it can have double that. The training is good though but if I'd get out as soon as possible if you want to fly in the civilian world. Being a pilot is allot more than just yankin' and bankin' guys and other than ailerons, elevators and rudders there is little similarity between flying in the military and flying in civilian life.

Answer 2

More hours isn't necessarily true. However most the time they will take an Ex-Military pilot over someone from the commuter industry. they will also likely take a bush pilot over someone with a boring job doing rounds in Southern California.

From a Friend who worked with Jet-Blue's Hiring system

3000 hours Bush no school past 12th

3000 hours College Degree

Bush pilot is the new FO

Answer 3

The perceived preference to military pilots is generally due to the fact that military pilots often get to fly larger, more complex aircraft much sooner than their civilian counterpart, and go through a more rigorous selection process.  I know of guys flying C-130's and P-3's with fewer that 300 hours under their belts.  That just doesn't happen in the civilian side due to insurance, etc.  The Military guy usually can adapt to civilian type of flying quite easily.

It also depends greatly on the airline and their hiring staff.  Their past experiences and predjudices with military or civilian guys can be very ingrained.

Answer 4

Hey Ryan B, since you don't accept em / im, did you fly in Ketchikan about 6-7 years ago for Promech?

Now, to answer the question. Everyone has given reasonably valid answers so far. The military guys have an edge because of the TYPE of training and experience the military gives most of them, but as for total time, most civilian pilots build it much quicker. Another facet to this is that because of the EOE rules, all operators give a preference to any ex-military personnel, pilots or not. It has to do with the way applicants are "scored" for various experience, education, training, and so on. A third facet is that traditionally the airlines gave a very heavy preference to ex-military aviators, and those companies that are still military-heavy on the management side still tend to do so. That said, I know a lot of airline pilots who cannot stand to fly with ex-military guys for various reasons; not all of them because it is a very individual thing that you cannot generalize about, but military pilots are not conditioned to think too far outside the box when it comes to "creative" flight decisions. They are often also accustomed to many things that the civilian flying world does not provide for them, so they do not always make the happiest airline employees. I'm not knocking military pilots at all (quite the contrary), but civilian-only pilots are often a much better fit in the world of comercial aviation.

As an aside here, I often fly with an ex-Naval aviator, retired, with command time, combat time, 15,000 hours and many other admirable credentials. Great guy, too. In most areas he's thorough and safe to a fault. Sadly, he's the worst VFR pilot with an ATP I've ever encountered and has his head inside the cockpit about 75% of the time, even in nice weather and on the occasional VFR legs. He often cannot find airports unless vectored to them, and he is not aware of all the intricacies of regulations, airspace, and so on that a civilian flight instructor must know. He is definitely way out of his element below FL180 and he cannot hand fly as well as many lower-time civvy flight school graduates that I have flown with. He is so meticulously procedures oriented that he will sometimes lose the "big picture" as to what is most important at a particular time, such as not recognizing the imminent need to talk to ATC instead of completing minor items on a checklist. If things do not go according to a well-laid out plan, he becomes very stressed and angry about it. I guess that this is the fallout of spending 8 or more hours flight planning for a single military mission. Making sure that things going wrong is minimized. In the civilian world, its very useful to be flexible, to be able to improvise instantly and safely without outside guidance, and to take it in stride without getting tweaked about it. Most civilian pilots who have flown the bush, medical EMS, charter, commuters, freight, etc etc are often much better suited for the airlines because they have developed this skill due to the requirements of most non-airline time-building experience. It's called being conditioned for a particular environment, and most military flying (save for transports / tankers) is not anything like civilian flying. Again, not all military pilots are like this, but it sometimes isn't easy to teach a war dog new tricks, and some airlines now recognize this. Again, I'm far from knocking the military guys (hat off, smart salute, thank's for serving to preserve my freedom), and only wish to point out that civilian pilots bring valuable experience to an airline cockpit.

Answer 5

From a hiring perspective, airlines take pilots from both regimes, but from a crew resource management point of view, ex-military pilots are sometimes very problematic. The skill and proficiency needed by a single-seat fighter pilot tends to make them more self-righteous and independent. These are not desired traits in the cockpit of a commercial airline operation. Companies have recognized that this is a very widespread problem, and proper CRM training is becoming mandatory for major airline operators.