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 full readiness audit, in checklist form. About 45 minutes, logbooks out — the same standard the Prep Pack is built to: you could submit a clean, internally consistent application within 2 hours of a window opening.
Delivered instantly on this page the moment you submit — no waiting on an email that may never come. We keep your address for resends and Hiring Window updates. No spam, no list-selling, unsubscribe anytime. Re-run it monthly — readiness expires.
All 11 files. The instrument layer nobody else sells: not a conversation about your application — the tools to audit it, count it six different ways, and submit it clean within 2 hours of a window opening.
One payment, secure checkout via Stripe, download on the confirmation page. Yours to keep. Re-verified quarterly and re-issued within 7 days of a verified process change at any covered airline.
We watch the hiring postings and portals for United, American, and Southwest, so a window never opens — or a posting quietly changes its minimums — without you hearing about it.
Monthly subscription. Cancel anytime — it’s a utility, not a contract.
For scale: a single human application review runs $349–$999, logbook transcription about $400–$549, and mock-interview packages $399–$849 (competitor prices observed October 2026). Those services have their place — the Prep Pack points you to them by name for the jobs humans do best. What none of them sells, at any price, is the instrument layer in this pack.
Checkout is handled by Stripe. The moment payment completes, you land on a confirmation page with your download — all 11 Prep Pack files plus the flight-time spreadsheet. Keep the files; they’re yours, including quarterly re-verified updates and re-issues within 7 days of a verified process change at a covered airline.
If the pack isn’t for you, email hello@majorready.com within 14 days of purchase for a full refund — no form, no retention call, no hard feelings. We would rather refund a mismatch than keep a pilot’s $79 under false pretenses; the honesty boundary on this page is the business model, not the marketing.
Eleven files, in the order you’ll use them. Built around what major-airline systems actually ask, what review teams actually check, and the decisions that can’t be unmade. Facts verified October 15, 2026 — and re-verified quarterly.
The map and the one-weekend plan: Saturday morning the audit, Saturday afternoon the vault, Sunday the runbook and the decision guide. Plus the honesty boundary, up front — what this pack is, and the one thing it refuses to be.
A page-by-page self-audit built to the strictest documented standard — American’s: signature on every page, totals carried forward, N-numbers and routes present, no lumped baseline entries, failures disclosed. With the freeze-date protocol that kills the #1 red flag (your application and your logbook telling two different stories) and a discrepancy log to work the findings.
One ledger, six airline views. American, Southwest, FedEx, and UPS do not count your time the way your logbook does — PIC means the commander who signed for the aircraft, simulator and deadhead time come out of total time, and military sorties are converted by the airline, not by you. Enter your hours once; read each airline’s version of them; the variance panel alarms before a reviewer has to. Includes the live spreadsheet.
Every field every system asks for, entered once — ten years of addresses, employment, education, training events — plus the 2026 map of where applications actually live now (United’s own portal, American’s pilots.aa.com, Southwest’s posting + grid), the per-system traps, and the freshness calendar that keeps a standing application from quietly going stale.
How the Pilot Records Database and PRIA actually work, what airlines see, and the consistency drill that makes your application, your logbook, and your records tell one story. Genuine red flags — a termination, an FAA action, a DUI, a 709 ride — are routed to named human professionals on page one. This file will not pretend DIY advice is safe there, because it isn’t.
The 2-hour submission drill, per airline: the standing ready-folder, the universal sequence for the day a window opens, the differences that bite at each carrier, and the 48 hours after you submit. In August 2026, Southwest ran a short, unannounced first officer window that closed August 31 — interviews ran in September without the pilots who were still getting their paperwork together. This file exists so that sentence is never about you.
Per-airline bring-lists from published sources only — what to carry, tabbed and staged, including the transcripts one carrier has rescheduled candidates over. Checklists, not coaching: this file assembles your documents; it does not rehearse your answers.
Which pathway actually applies to you — and which doors close forever if you knock wrong. An Endeavor pilot who interviews at Delta off the street and is unsuccessful is no longer eligible for CAP, the guaranteed progression. United allows two attempts in a lifetime across its Aviate, military, and traditional paths combined. Read this file before you apply anywhere, not after.
One fictional regional FO, fourteen real-world errors — every one found by a specific file in this pack, with the answer key. Work it before your own audit if you want to see every error class in action first.
Frameworks and prompts to organize your own TMAAT / SBI material — your stories, your words, inventoried before you need them. It organizes; it does not coach, script, or tell you what they want to hear.
A one-page, ATS-plain resume whose every number is identical to your File 02 ledger — because a resume that disagrees with your application is a variance with better typography.
Delivered as print-ready PDFs plus the live flight-time spreadsheet — Markdown masters included. Works with paper logbooks and any electronic logbook export. Your files stay on your machine — Major Ready never sees your logbook, your records, or your disclosure sheet.
No email required. These are the documented rules the Prep Pack is built on, published because a pilot who understands the system is the only kind who buys instruments for it.
American’s named negative trends — signatures, page totals, the 10% rule — and the five-part weekend audit that finds them first.
Commander of record vs. sole manipulator — the counting differences that quietly change what your hours are worth at six carriers.
Southwest’s true window and its grid trap, United’s standing portal, American’s re-entry — and what “ready” means on day one.
You’re flying a line. You don’t have time to refresh three carriers’ postings and portals on the chance something changed — and by the time the group chat hears about a window, it’s been open for days. That’s the whole point of this.
The first officer postings and standing portals for United, American, and Southwest are checked every Monday, with an extra check within 24 hours of any credible hiring announcement from an airline itself. Window openings, closings, and changes to posted minimums and requirements — that’s the watch list.
When something changes, you get a short alert: which carrier, what changed, and a direct link to the official posting. When nothing changes, you get nothing. No roundups, no rumor-mill noise, no weekly newsletter padding. Silence is a feature — it means the watch is running and the sky hasn’t moved.
Because your logbook is audited and your data is organized, applying is the Prep Pack’s 2-hour drill — while the window is still open, not a week of digging after it closes.
Subject: No change to act on — Southwest first officer application remains closed
Southwest: First officer application still closed as of our October 15, 2026 verification. Your Flight Hours grid can be updated anytime at Southwest’s careers site — remember, updating the grid is not an application. We check again Monday, and within 24 hours of any Southwest hiring announcement.
That’s the whole email. What changed, what it means, the official link when there’s something to click.
Works on its own — you don’t need the Prep Pack to use it. It works best paired: the alert tells you the window moved, the Prep Pack is why you can be submitted within 2 hours of reading 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.
Two different answers, because the products do two different jobs. The Prep Pack covers six: United, American, Southwest, and Delta in full — systems, counting rules, documents, and runbooks — plus the FedEx and UPS counting views and cargo PIC gates in the Flight-Time Counting Engine and the Pathway & Attempt-Budget Guide. (Cargo is a second-contract decision for most regional FOs: FedEx requires 500 hours of PIC in a jet or heavy-turboprop category, and UPS’s reported minimum is 1,000 hours of PIC — the pack shows you your real numbers against both.) Hiring Window Alerts monitors United, American, and Southwest postings and portals. If a carrier changes how it accepts applications, the materials are re-verified and re-issued.
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. What the pack does include is everything around the interview that isn’t coaching: the per-airline document assembly lists (File 06) and a worksheet to inventory your own stories (File 09) — plus, in the pack, named referrals to the human services that do coaching well, with their prices, for when you want them.
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.
Checkout runs through Stripe; the confirmation page carries your download: all 11 files of Prep Pack v2 as print-ready PDFs, plus the Flight-Time Counting Engine as a live spreadsheet (.xlsx) you fill in with your own hours — Markdown masters included. Buy it once and keep it. The pack is re-verified quarterly and re-issued within 7 days of a verified process change at any covered airline, and buyers receive the updates — so the version you apply with is the current one, not the one you happened to buy.
The covered postings and portals are checked every Monday, with an extra check within 24 hours of a credible hiring announcement from an airline itself. When a check finds a change — a window opening or closing, or posted minimums and requirements changing — the alert goes out by email that day, with a direct link to the carrier’s official posting so you can verify it yourself before acting. When a check finds nothing, you hear nothing.
Anytime, no retention gauntlet. It’s a $9/month utility, not a contract. Run it through a hiring cycle and cancel when you’ve got a class date — that’s the intended use, and the door is one email or a couple of clicks, whichever you prefer.
Email hello@majorready.com within 14 days of purchase for a full refund — no form, no retention call, no hard feelings. The full policy is stated in How buying works — and the guarantee, and it is the policy we honor, word for word.
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.