After a comprehensive review of our pilot hiring requirements, Delta has decided to make a four-year college degree “preferred” rather than “required” for first officer candidates, effective immediately.
While we feel as strongly as ever about the importance of education, there are highly qualified candidates – people who we would want to welcome to our Delta family – who have gained more than the equivalent of a college education through years of life and leadership experience. Making the four-year degree requirement preferred removes unintentional barriers to our Delta flight decks.
Degrees are becoming just a waste of money.
ReplyDeleteAnd United has said that diversity is more important than piloting ability.
ReplyDeleteOMFG. What morons. Merit, talent, and skill are important. Diversity only shows a palette of colors and backgrounds. I piloted a 7,900 ton submarine... they aren't going to let me fly a plane that weighs 225 tons. Both exist in a substance that allows movement in 3 dimensions, both use a control that resembles a horse shoe shaped steering wheel, both are long tubular, with front and back control surfaces, and the sub has one propeller. The airliner has 4 jet engines.
DeleteI would rather have an experienced pilot with no degree than someone right out of college with very little flying time.
ReplyDeleteIn prewar RAF pilots had to come from certain expensive schools, which in effect prevented lower class people from joining. Facing a potential shortage of pilots, RAF started recruiting wider, and predictably those without the higher education, who earned their wings, did just fine.
ReplyDeleteSame crap in the US, as after WW2 USAAF many pilots with plenty of four engine experience (presumably under stress, as there were people trying to kill them) could only get jobs with airlines if the had a college degree.
Don't think Chuck Yeager was good enough to pilot a plane, just because he hadn't taken a higher education?