Originally Posted by
snackysmores
Good luck with that. You don't necessarily need to be a CA, but you have to sell your soul to the air group. At least 3 job fairs, women in aviation, volunteer at the soup kitchen, help build the gay pride parade float etc. You also had to work in training department, but they don't allow pilots to train other pilots in ground school anymore. Pretty sure this only applies to Horizon guys, i haven't heard of other regional pilots having to do this crap.
Had a QX guy in the jumpseat a few months ago who was heading to Alaska. 8 years as an FO, 6 months as a CA, SPT instructor, no recs, went to the NW job fair, applied for the first time, interviewed, hired within 3 months of the fair. Not just a line CA that applied when the window was open, but not exactly an astronaut either. Just another anecdote I know, but I've heard more stories like that recently.
It seems not so much that there are disadvantages to being at Horizon in getting hired at Alaska, rather that there just are not any advantages, which itself is surprising. Some people come here hoping to make a good impression with Alaska, but at best that goes unnoticed, at worst they see that you aren't a good employee and don't hire you even though they'll hire bad employees from other companies because they don't know they're bad employees...which I guess is a disadvantage for working at Horizon. Hmm.