Career Progression

Aviation is a small community. I have a group of pilots I know from ATP and friends of friends.

There are three that I "talk" with daily on Facebook. All came from ATP. They are Mike, Jake and Kyle.

Mike and Jake both started at the same regional. Both worked hard outside of flying and networked with OBAP. Outside of OBAP they both volunteered at a flight school to help aspiring pilots (those still in grade school).

Mike was awarded a Delta 737 scholarship. From that scholarship he got his type rating AND recently started at Delta airlines...at 28 years old. Mike was never a Captain. He will retire #2 at Delta.

Jake interviewed at Delta as is awaiting the final judgement. He followed right behind Mike.

Kyle went to a "lower end" regional that had 2 year upgrades (back in 2007 when we all started). Well the slowdown happened. Kyle did upgrade to Captain last year. He networked and started at Jetblue a few months ago.

Then there is me. I've been sitting over in the right seat just flying....pondering if I should have been networking as well. Don't get me wrong I don't expect a job to be handed to me, but if I had been networking maybe I'd be in the right seat of something bigger.

With the uncertainty going on with my current airline I have applied elsewhere. So far I've applied at Spirit and Virgin America. I don't really want to work for Spirit for the rest of my career....Virgin America for that matter, but they are both better places to be than any regional.