Originally Posted by 185flier
there are at least ten guys (and two Gals) from penair who are at Alaska that came from PenAir.
It is as safe to fly up here as anywhere. whats different is most is single pilot and little supervision. So guys that break rules have problems. Fly by the rules and be safe.
our company is a great place to work and is absolutely safe and fun and management wants us to be safe. In fact our company procedures are much more restrictive than the FAR's
I am sure that there are guys and gals at AS who are from Penair However that doesn't mean that they will be picked up in the future. Times have changed at significantly since three years ago. Back in 2000 AS was the bottom of the barrel as far as majors went. Who wanted to work for AS at half the pay of a career at AA or UAL? In the interview process one of the questions that HR would ask was "why would you want to work here over DAL"? AS was much less picky back then. The cream of the industry right now has its eye on UPS, FedEx and AS. Today AS has Blue Angles and 29 year old RJ captains in ground school. Soon they will have possibly a pile of NWA MD80 Captains lined up at the front door. Flying a Caravan out of Dillingham wouldn't even cause a moment of pause before they toss the app in the no pile. My aim isn't to cause alarm or discontent but think about it a little. I wouldn't sit in a Cherokee 6 on the ramp at King Salmon and be confident that I am on my way to Alaska Airlines if I were you. Times have changed.
I don't know what equipment you fly for Penair or where your base is. A turbine FO out of ANC is pretty safe, but the deep bush is a different matter. In addition Alaska Airtaxi is like a boiling pot. Things are good for a while after a string of accidents but then competition moves in and the tension causes standards to slip and people begin to get killed. Even now statistics rate a rural Alaskan Cessna pilot as the most dangerous job in the country. Just because you haven't happened upon the wreckage of a college yet doesn't mean that the risk isn't there. These things are played out over long periods of time. Complacency and bad luck are a slow process. They say that the odds of being involved in a fatal accident as a bush pilot in AK reaches 100% after 20 years. Alaskan Aviation has been hailed as a industry run mostly by women. The reason for that is because the husbands who started the business was killed in a crash years prior.
You know that you are in danger when you start thinking that you have it licked and that nothing bad will happen.
SkyHigh