Major airline application windows open on short notice and close fast. Major Ready is the preparation toolkit for regional first officers who refuse to spend that window fixing a logbook: audited hours, organized application data, documents in hand, and an alert the day a window opens.
Built by a regional FO doing this exact grind right now. No hype, no promises — just preparation.
It’s rarely the flying. It’s the paperwork — and by the time you find the gaps, the window is already closing.
Major carriers open first officer application windows with little warning, and some stay open for days, not months. If your first move after a window opens is opening your logbook, you’re already behind everyone who prepped in the off-season.
Paper logbook totals that don’t match your electronic one. PIC, SIC, turbine, night, and cross-country time that don’t break out the way the application asks for them. Finding a 40-hour discrepancy while a recruiter is waiting is the worst version of this job.
Certificates, medical, FCC radio license, passport, ten years of addresses and employment history, checkride records — every application asks, and none of it lives in one place. Scrambling for a driving record at midnight is a choice you make months earlier.
Three ways in, depending on how far out your target window is. Start free, go deep with the Prep Pack, and let the alerts watch the windows for you.
The one-page readiness check a regional FO should run before any window opens.
One email with the checklist. No spam, no list-selling, unsubscribe anytime.
The complete workbook set for getting application-ready once, properly — then just maintaining it.
One payment. Yours to keep, including updates for the current hiring cycle.
We watch the majors’ hiring pages so a window never opens — or quietly changes its minimums — without you hearing about it.
Monthly subscription. Cancel anytime in two clicks.
Four working documents, built around the questions major-airline applications actually ask — in the order you’ll hit them.
A structured pass through your whole flying history: total time, PIC, SIC, turbine PIC, night, cross-country, actual instrument, and dual given — cross-checked between your paper and electronic logbooks so the totals you type into an application are totals you can defend line by line.
Every field the portals ask for, gathered once: ten years of addresses, full employment history with dates and supervisors, education, checkride and training-event history, and the honest-disclosure items — organized so filling out any carrier’s application becomes copy-and-paste instead of archaeology.
ATP certificate, first-class medical, FCC restricted radiotelephone permit, passport, driver’s license and driving record, plus the records requests (PRIA, PRD, FOIA) that take weeks to come back — with a tracker for issue dates, expirations, and lead times so nothing is expired or missing when it’s requested.
A backward plan from your target carrier: what “ready” looks like 90 days out, 30 days out, and the week a window opens — including which fixes (logbook discrepancies, record requests, passport renewals) have long lead times and have to start now, not then.
Delivered as spreadsheets and print-ready PDFs. Works with paper logbooks and any electronic logbook export.
You’re flying a line. You don’t have time to refresh four careers pages every day on the chance something changed. That’s the whole point of this.
The pilot hiring pages and application portals for United, American, Southwest, and Delta are checked daily for window openings, closings, and changes to posted minimums and requirements.
When something changes, you get a short alert: which carrier, what changed, and a direct link to the official posting. No roundups, no rumor-mill noise, no weekly newsletter padding.
Because your logbook is audited and your data is organized, applying is an afternoon of copy-and-paste — while the window is still open, not a week of digging after it closes.
Subject: Hiring window open — [Carrier] first officer applications
What changed, the posted minimums as listed by the carrier, and the direct link to the official application. That’s it.
Standalone subscription — you don’t need the Prep Pack to use it. Cancel anytime.
I’m a first officer at a regional, building my time and aiming at the same four carriers you are. When I sat down to get my own application house in order, I found the usual mess: a paper logbook and an electronic one that didn’t quite agree, documents in three different folders, and a ten-year address history I had to reconstruct from old lease emails.
Major Ready is the system I built to fix my own application — turned into a toolkit so you don’t have to build it from scratch on a crashpad couch. It won’t fly the hours for you and it won’t get you hired. It makes sure that when your window opens, the only thing standing between you and a submitted application is you deciding to send it.
The four US majors most regional FOs target: United, American, Southwest, and Delta. The checklist and Prep Pack are written around their application formats, and Hiring Window Alerts monitor their pilot hiring pages and portals. If a carrier changes how it accepts applications, the materials and alerts are updated to match.
No. Major Ready covers application and logbook readiness only — the work that happens before an interview is ever offered. There is no interview coaching, no technical-exam prep, and no simulator preparation here. Plenty of good services do that part; this is the part that has to be finished before they matter.
No — and be suspicious of anyone who promises that. Hiring decisions belong entirely to the airlines, and no checklist changes your qualifications. What preparation does change is whether a complete, accurate, defensible application is sitting in front of them while the window is open. That part is fully in your control, and it’s the part this toolkit handles.
Yes. The workbook is built to cross-check an electronic export against your paper logbook and your airline’s records — which is exactly where discrepancies hide. If you’re paper-only, it works as a structured audit pass on its own.
An instant download: spreadsheets for the audit workbook, data organizer, and timeline planner, plus print-ready PDFs of the checklists. Buy it once, keep it, and use it across as many application cycles as you need.
The covered hiring pages are checked daily, and an alert goes out by email the same day a change is detected — a window opening or closing, or posted minimums and requirements changing. Every alert links to the carrier’s official posting so you can verify it yourself before acting.
Anytime, in a couple of clicks, no retention gauntlet. It’s a $9/month utility, not a contract. Most pilots keep it running through a full hiring cycle and cancel once they’ve got a class date — that’s the intended use.
Student pilots and CFIs still building toward a regional — the free checklist will help you keep clean records early, but the Prep Pack is written for pilots who are already (or about to be) qualified to apply to a major. It’s also not a substitute for reading each carrier’s own posted requirements, which always win over anything here.