No Flying Experience? JetBlue Wants to Hire You as a Pilot!
JetBlue’s proposed recruitment program would train pilots from scratch to fly smaller 100-seat jets like this one. (Photo: iStock/csfotoimages)
JetBlue is launching a pilot-training program that will recruit students with no flight experience and train them up from scratch via its own program. As Bloomberg News reports, similar approaches are already being used by European and Asian carriers, but this would be the first in the U.S.
Traditionally, potential airline pilots gain their minimum required flight hours from the military or as instructors in flight schools. JetBlue’s approach will break from the norm in that it will seek out total newbies and train them via its own curriculum.
To be fair, the airline isn’t planning on picking people at random and putting them in the cockpit. The applicants will take academic classes, spend time in simulators to gain experience flying in bad weather and other difficult situations, and will work with a partner company to accumulate 1,500 hours of flying experience and meet other minimum legal requirements for commercial pilots.
“The program is designed to accommodate prospective trainees with little-to-no aviation experience, but who pass a rigorous selection process,” JetBlue spokesperson Doug McGraw told Bloomberg News.
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There are 24 slots available for this initiative, which will be run on a trial basis in 2016 (JetBlue’s total pilot fleet is about 2,600 strong), and the newly trained pilots will first be schooled to use smaller 100-seat jets. If the program goes well, the airline will consider extending it, and placing the pilots in larger aircraft in the JetBlue fleet.
Some backstory: In 2013, the FAA raised the minimum number of hours required for commercial airline pilots from 250 to 1,500, and the new “1,500 hour rule” has been blamed for pilot shortage in the years since. Industry watchers explain that the pilot shortage hits regional airlines the hardest, because the role of these smaller airlines has increased in the past few years as major airlines basically hire them to do their shorter runs.
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However, JetBlue has said it’s not experiencing a pilot shortage, and that this new program — called Gateway 7 — is simply an additional way to recruit pilots. The airline already has six other recruitment programs and those will remain in place. The program is innovative, but has yet to be approved by federal regulators.
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