A Pioneering University-Airline Flight Internship Program: A Follow-Up Study of Intern Participants

Abstract

Verbatim from Embry-Riddle Scholarly Commons. Not paraphrased, not summarized.

This article presents the results of a follow-up survey administered to 110 former university interns who served a semester long internship in the fight operations department at United Airlines. The intent of the survey was to discover if the purposes of the internship had been fulfilled. Also, the survey gathered information on the characteristics of the internship participants in terms of their current employment in the aviation industry with the goal of discovering, among other things, how many of the interns were ultimately hired by United Airlines. A total of 78 of the 110 interns surveyed returned a completed survey. The results indicated that over half (41 of 78) of the respondents had, indeed, been hired in a pilot position by a major airline with the vast majority of these (36 or 41 hired by a major) hired by United Airlines. Of those not hired by United Airlines, only two are no longer in aviation while the rest are employed at other major airlines, regional airlines, corporate flight departments or in some part of general aviation such as flight instruction.

Authors

• NewMyer, David A. Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University
• Ruiz, Jose R Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University
• Worrells, D. Scott Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University