JetBlue Shakes Up Pilot Hiring by Training Them from Scratch

JetBlue Shakes Up Pilot Hiring by Training Them from Scratch(bloomberg.com)

14 points by wcbeard10 10 years ago | 12 comments

brbsix 10 years ago |

At least from what little is mentioned (and what very little I know on the subject), this sounds like a terrible way to become a commercial pilot. If you can't go a more traditional route like military or Embry-Riddle, it seems like an airline in the developing world would by far be the most fun. I think Susi Air was hiring/training foreign pilots with little to no prior experience, though due to new legislation I believe there is now a 250hr requirement.

Edit: I double-checked and there is now a 750hr requirement for foreign pilots. What a bummer as there used to be opportunities for 0hr's in Indo.

fit2rule 10 years ago |

There are already too many commercial pilots in the world, and almost all of them are captive to the need to maintain their flight books by .. flying often. This has been a common problem for decades now - too many pilots, not enough planes for them to fly.

So what has happened is those who own and operate the planes have a glut on their hands. They can choose the cheapest pilots available, and keep them flying for cheap, simply because there are 10 more pilots out there willing to fly just to maintain their certs.

The same is happening in software development. There are too many cheap developers out there, willing to write software for beans, and thus producing crappy software is the norm. Nobody wants to pay to do software 'properly' these days - they want it down 'now'. Knowing that there are 100 developers out there willing to work for peanuts, for every developer who expects to get paid properly for doing the really hard work first, means that customers of software development have a glut on their hands too. Its a buyers market, simple.

gearhart 10 years ago | |

These two issues are caused by very different mechanisms.

Unlike the flight hours issue, software developers don't have to work to keep up their "license" - in fact, in my experience, most software developers would prefer to take months perfecting everything they build. The reason low-quality software gets shipped is either:

- that's what's actually needed in the situation. This has been said on HN plenty of times before in the context of everything from software to house building, but if you know what you build is going to be used for a limited period of time, and then the requirements are going to either change or be better understood and you're going to have to change what you've built, why spend months or years building it perfectly the first time? The core algorithm behind Google's search, or Facebook's timeline are well-crafted, beautiful, pragmatic examples of software excellence [at least from all externally available evidence] but they didn't become so by being shipped as perfect first time - PageRank, although lauded, is almost comically simplistic in comparison with the problem space that Google addresses now.

- the client can't tell the difference. In a world where everything is an app, clients are becoming less and less technical. When all computers could do was handle spreadsheets and crunch numbers, anyone who wanted software built was a technologist, or a scientist, or an economist. Now every field needs software, so people from every walk of life are software clients, and the level of ability to differentiate between good (maintainable, extensible, reliable) and bad software that you can reasonable expect from them has plummeted.

Meta: is there a rule that says how many responses a HN post can get before it descends into a discussion about software development?

anon1mous 10 years ago | |

>> The same is happening in software development.

Nonsense. There is a huge shortage of devs and it's only going to get worse, software is taking over the world.

fit2rule 10 years ago | | |

There truly are parts of the world where there are too many programmers.

throwaway_exer 10 years ago |

It's a really bad article:

* did not say who's paying for the training

* number of hours required for ATP is less than 1,500 for certain structured training programs

* there definitely is and will be a shortage of ATPs who are willing to be paid at regional rates of $18k-$25k under the new knee-jerk regulations

* other airlines are already offering school loan "forgiveness" for new hires

TheSpiceIsLife 10 years ago | |

Last sentence, third to last paragraph: Prospective pilots would pay for their own training.

a3n 10 years ago |

I suppose the pilot union's objection is that this will somehow lead to a lower tier pay for incoming pilots.

Would experienced developers have similar objections, if their companies proposed essentially running their own code academies?

karmacondon 10 years ago | |

I understand the concern, but I'm not sure if that's a fair comparison. It would be like tech companies going from "We're only going to hire people who have master's degrees in computer science" to "We'll experiment with training programs for people who just have bachelor's degrees in related fields"

It might indeed lower pay for the people who have the most experience, but probably not by much. It's hard to believe that it will be a net negative for the company or its customers.

1945 10 years ago |

That's terrifying.