V Shared

Question by K H: Do regional Airlines cull out pilot applications based on age?
I know age discrimination is illegal. But suspecting it goes on is one thing, proving it is something else. Is there some form of neutral data which reflects the hiring tendencies of regional airlines?
This queston is based from the perspective of a 40 year old individual with a background as an aviation mechanic on heavy jets and considering a career change by going the CFI route to the regionals.

Best answer:

Answer by Ben Dere Dun Dat
In general, airline applications (whether regional or major) are evaluated numerically in a way that assigns a certain number of points for an applicant having various qualifications. The only time age comes into play is for applicants under 23 or up near retirement age. While you can legally be hired at 19 you cannot upgrade to captain until 23, so the regionals are hesitant to hire people too much under that age.

The more important parameters are education, ratings, flight experience in numerous categories, whether you are a minority or veteran, whether you’ve been involved in a flying accident, incident or violation, your driving record, your legal record, your employment history and even your credit score (bad credit means you may be untrustworthy). All this is mixed together numerically and if you don’t meet a certain minimum score, your application is culled from the rest and you’ll be invited to reapply when you have more experience. Obviously, in a tight market they are going to interview the higher scoring people first unless you have an inside contact who can recommend you and increase the liklihood that your application will be considered.

Since a 4 year degree is preferred, this means a typical “new hire” is going to be at least 22. Add on a minimum experience requirement of say 1,000 hours total and 200 multi (a very low estimate in the current market) and that’s automatically going to raise the minimum preferred hiring age to 23-24. In fact, the average “new hire” at the regionals averages 24-28 years old. Current “preferred minimums” are at least 2,000 to 3,000 hours, 500 multi-engine and an ATP. For a flight instructor building hours this represents a good 3-4 years work experience at a reasonably busy school that offers multi-engine training, so the people being hired right now are typically 26 years old and and up.

When it comes to getting invited to an interview, they know you already meet the minimum requirements, so they evaluate you on another set of criteria, one of them being maturity. While you might call this age discrimination, someone can be over thirty and still quite immature, while someone who is 21 might be rock solid. As a rule however, someone who has finished 2-4 years of college, has been in the military and is married with children is going to be regarded as being more mature than someone who hasn’t done those things yet. Young single men in particular are statistically more likely to be a “loose cannon” and cause problems for themselves or for the airlines. This is why so many airlines use psychological and personality profiling in their application and interview process.

All this together would make it all but impossible to file suit for age discrimination. There are just too many other factors involved in pilot selection.

What do you think? Answer below!