Republic Airways' pilot application portal contains a data entry field requiring instrument time logged in a Flight Training Device, and the form's validation logic rejects a zero entry — creating a practical obstacle for applicants who have never accumulated loggable FTD time during their training career. The issue surfaces specifically because many pilots pursuing regional airline positions have completed their instrument training entirely in actual aircraft or in Aviation Training Devices (ATDs) that may have been logged under different categories, leaving the FTD field technically blank. Because the form does not accept a null or zero value, applicants are forced to either contact Republic's recruiting department directly, enter a nominal placeholder figure, or abandon the application until they can clarify the correct procedure — none of which reflects well on the candidate experience.
The distinction between simulator categories matters here from both a regulatory and a recordkeeping standpoint. The FAA defines Flight Training Devices under 14 CFR Part 61 and Advisory Circular 61-136, separating them from Full Flight Simulators (FFS) and Basic Aviation Training Devices (BATDs/AATDs). Many instrument students, particularly those trained at smaller Part 141 schools or through Part 61 programs, logged their simulated instrument time in desktop trainers classified as ATDs rather than FTDs, which carry specific FAA qualification levels (FTD Level 4 through 7). A pilot who completed an instrument rating entirely in a Redbird or Frasca ATD, or in actual IMC, would have zero FTD-specific hours — a legitimate and common scenario that Republic's application system apparently fails to accommodate.
For applicants targeting regional carriers under the current hiring environment, application friction of this kind has real consequences. The regional airline sector has spent several years competing aggressively for a constrained pilot pipeline, and barriers in the application process — even administrative ones — can cause qualified candidates to disengage or seek positions elsewhere. Republic Airways in particular has invested heavily in pipeline development through its Republic Airways Academy and cadet programs, making it notable that a form validation error would create confusion precisely among the lower-time applicants those programs are designed to capture. Recruiters at regional carriers routinely advise candidates to reach out directly when application portals behave unexpectedly, but that workaround places the burden on the applicant rather than the carrier.
The broader issue reflects a recurring challenge in aviation human resources systems: regulatory logging categories do not always map cleanly onto the fields that airline applicant tracking systems were designed to capture. As simulator technology has proliferated across flight training — with more schools using FAA-qualified devices at varying certification levels — the taxonomy of loggable time has grown more complex. An applicant might have hundreds of hours of simulated instrument time across ATDs, FTDs, and FFS platforms, each governed by different regulatory provisions and logged in different logbook fields. Application portals built around simplified data models frequently fail to account for the edge cases that legitimate pilot backgrounds produce, underscoring the need for airline recruiting teams to audit their digital intake processes against the actual diversity of training paths candidates now follow.