Originally Posted by
ten checks
Just out of curiosity what’s the reason for not wanting to go for airlines straight away? If you plan to base your career on airline flying it would be the best long term to join them straight away.
Flying 1000-2000 hours on ideally a320/b737 will give you way more (in terms of needed skill/experience and further career developments) than even instructing on cessna.
Flying 1000-2000 hours in general aviation can take good 4-5 years, while in most airlines you make that in 2.5 years max.
So if you take one person who gets to airlines, and one who carries on with GA, after say 5 years you will have one candidate that has just shy of 4000h on cs25 aircraft and even possibly just after command upgrade or approaching one, and the second candidate has at most 2000h TT with no experience on jets. So in terms of purely getting your airline career, think about it.
If you are scared you need right to live and work in EU but don’t have one, it’s still not over, there are a few european airlines that go further with that. For example Wizzair has :
Unrestricted right to live and work in the EU or Albania, Armenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Moldova, North Macedonia, Russia, Serbia, Ukraine. afaik They even have a base in serbia. Many more probably after doing research maybe ryanair and more?
I’m not doubting that airlines hire people straight out of flight school in general, but I do question how competitive a fresh graduate is when they don’t have an automatic right to live and work in the EU, especially when there are many equally qualified candidates who do hold EU passports.
From an airline’s point of view, if two applicants have the same hours and frozen ATPL, but one involves work-right considerations and the other doesn’t, the choice is pretty straightforward. That’s why I’m thinking about building some GA or charter experience first .... not because I don’t want an airline career, but because I want to avoid finishing training and being stuck on the ground for years job hunting.
I think that having some real operational experience and higher total time might give me at least a small edge over someone who has just completed training, while also keeping me flying instead of waiting.I’ll obviously apply to airlines that have bases in my country and to those that are willing to sponsor visas, but I don’t want to rely solely on that.