Fee-for-Departure Committee Continues Its Work

By F/O Lindsey Van Beusekom (ExpressJet), Chair, Fee-for-Departure Committee

I’ve been a member of ALPA’s Fee-for-Departure (FFD) Committee since 2017 and was appointed interim chair last July. And just recently, Capt. Joe DePete, ALPA’s president, appointed me chair of the committee. I fly the same schedules, encounter the same issues, and have the same concerns as other FFD pilots. In my position as FFD chair, I draw upon my personal experiences and knowledge to help advance the entire FFD community along with my fellow committee members.

The FFD Committee has three main areas of focus: career protection; career progression; and enhancing pay, benefits, and work rules. The committee’s goal is to help FFD pilots get where they want to go in their careers. The committee supports those pilots who decide to spend their entire career at an FFD carrier and those who seek career progression at a mainline carrier. It also works to improve the pay, benefits, and work rules for FFD pilots.

Over the last several years, we’ve seen a big change in FFD contracts—advances in pay, benefits, work rules, and career progression. No one’s working for $15,000 a year anymore, thankfully. And with flow-through agreements, career path programs (CPPs), and similar arrangements, a job at a mainline carrier is becoming more attainable than ever before.

In ALPA’s ongoing effort to promote career progression, the Association continues to offer its FFD Application & Interview Workshop, a free benefit for ALPA members who fly for FFD carriers. These in-person workshops provide the opportunity to get face-to-face advice from some of the industry’s top hiring experts, the specialists at Cage Marshall Consulting. The committee hosted two sessions of the one-day workshop at ALPA’s Conference Center in Herndon, Va., in early March and has more scheduled throughout the year (see “Future Workshops and Webinars”).

The goal of the workshops is twofold: to increase the number of ALPA pilots being interviewed and to increase the success rate of those who garner an interview. The best way to do that, the committee has determined, is for FFD pilots to start preparing for the interview process long before they ever have an interview lined up. The application and interview processes can be detailed, complicated, and complex, and sometimes one mistake can be the difference between a job offer and “better luck next time”—if there is a next time.

ALPA has offered these workshops since 2015 and has helped hundreds of FFD pilots prepare for the next step in their careers. However, with more than 14,000 FFD pilots, the Association has only touched the tip of the iceberg. The workshops can benefit just about any pilot looking to get hired by a mainline. There’s no secret revealed, no buzzwords given, but the workshop helps to fully prepare FFD pilots for quite possibly the biggest interview they’ll ever have.

It’s never too early, either; there’s a reason it’s called the Application & Interview Workshop and not just the Interview Workshop. The application process is just as important as the interview. In fact, application issues or omissions are the most common reasons for a failed interview. In response to that knowledge, the workshop provides a methodical review of the application process: common stumbling blocks, focus areas, and the need for extreme thoroughness. If the application asks for information, make sure to provide it in full or you may not get that call. Angie Marshall, one of the consultants who leads the workshop, advises, “You can explain away just about anything except an omission. Leave something out, however, and it becomes a question of trust.”

Once you’ve completed and submitted your application, you’ll (knock on wood) get a call for an interview. The workshops help you prepare for that, too, explaining the types of questions you’ll likely get asked and what companies are looking to learn. Spoiler alert: they don’t want to know if you can fly a plane; your résumé and application told them that. They want to know about you as a person and if you fit into their culture.

To do that, you’ll generally hear two types of questions: “Tell me about a time” questions where you look back in your career and “What would you do” questions that pose hypothetical situations. And while the workshop won’t provide you tailor-made stories guaranteed to wow your interviewer, it will provide you with tips and advice for how to put your best foot forward while telling your story.

If you have a CPP or a conditional job offer (CJO), this workshop can help better prepare you to complete your journey. Did you know, for example, that a CJO can be withdrawn? Or that you can be removed from a CPP? It can happen, for one of many reasons:

• Incomplete application
• Application omissions (e.g., failed checkride, DUI)
• Logbook/flight-time error
• Attendance (e.g., “senioritis”)
• Failure to report events after the CJO
• Social media posts
• Lack of professionalism
• Arriving late to the interview
• Attitude
• Canned answers
• Career stagnation

The path to your next job can be a long and difficult one. For many pilots, it’s the final job interview you’ll ever go on—a life-altering event that will set your path for the rest of your working days. If you can get a leg up on others with a simple, one-day workshop . . . why wouldn’t you? On behalf of the members of the FFD Committee, I invite you to sign up for the next ALPA Application & Interview Workshop. And check out ffd.alpa.org for everything else the committee has to offer to fellow FFD pilots.

This article was originally published in the April 2019 issue of Air Line Pilot.