FormerTWPilot

Dear Tradewind,

It has been a rocky marriage and unfortunately/fortunately we had to go our separate ways. I will be honest like most of your pilot relationships we were clearly using each other for what we both needed. I wanted to write you this note as you are certainly going to move on and I wish you nothing but the best. Please take my feedback as advice on how to have more successful pilot relationships moving forward.

Everyone knows 135 gigs are hard and there are a lot of moving pieces. The company needs to make money whenever it can, and if it means adding a charter to the end of a pilot’s really long day, I understand and I am fine with that part. But, you guys have lost 10+ pilots in the past 45+ days. Seriously that is a huge red flag management team! This company has a lot of problems. I don’t agree with 100% of what the previous TW disgruntled pilot posted on this forum that is wrong with Tradewind, but I do agree with a good majority of it. You guys could have fixed a lot by now but lets be real with each other, not much has changed. I too could write a novel about all the issues with the clueless, teenage, minimum wage dispatchers that are seriously clueless. But it is accurately covered in the previous post on here and I will be wasting my breath trying to get you to hire legitimate dispatchers that come at a higher cost.

Sorry for kicking this dead horse, but seriously if there is one thing that you take out of this breakup note it is the word “overweight.” I appreciate you guys taking fuel off the planes in order to help remedy this issue, but come on. We all know you are just putting lipstick on a pig. Every pilot is still being pressured to fly these planes overweight! When you have 7 pax and can’t take all the bags due to weight and balance, and the baggage handlers give you a hard time because the plane before you took off with 8 people and “way more bags,” then you know there is 100% a problem. Irony is the plane that took off before you with 8 people and more bags just happened to be flown by someone in ownership. Insert monkey emoji with hands over mouth.

Ignorance on wake turbulence is the company’s second biggest constant safety threat. There are a lot of pilots that are not utilizing proper wake turbulence separation. A PC-12 has no business starting a take off roll 30 - 40 seconds after an MD-11 or 777 has just taken off or landed. There are senior pilots based in SJU that are setting this example on a regular basis and it is going to cause an accident. Are 90-120 seconds really that important to your businesses bottom line or everyone’s safety?

Management needs to weed out the bad apples across the board. I know first hand that they have received multiple complaints about a certain pilot that is blatantly rude, has zero people skills, speaks without any consideration of others, that 95% of the pilots hate flying with. If the company held a Survivor type tribal council for all the pilots to vote one pilot off the island, they would 100% be gone. I used to dread having to go fly with this pilot as does every other pilot that ends up in a pairing with them. It really is amazing how much better a long day of part 135 flying is when you fly with a decent person. I may seem petty and all “boo hoo I have to fly with a crappy person” millennial, but you guys, “Tradwind Management” were the ones that made the post about how we are “all a team” and “that is what makes all the hard work worth it.” Well if being a team is going to make the hard work worth it, get rid of the crappy teammates that everyone hates being on the team with!

In addition when it comes to bad apples, there is a certain standards captain that needs to learn that Tradewind is a business not a fraternity where they get to haze all the pilots new and old. When the entire crew on the SBH shuttle takes the time to get the plane cleaned and prepped for the next day and the standards captain just blatantly throws trash on the floor 3 inches from the garbage bag, on purpose, night after night, it really turns people off in regards to the entire company. Show some respect to your pilots and maybe you will get some in return. Also in regards to another SJU senior pilot: We all notice that they repeatedly steal every single pilots half day schedules when they decide that they are going to grace us with their presence on the line. Do they not think that some of us make plans when we are scheduled for a half-day? Again I know it is part 135 and the company has to make money so schedule swaps will happen, but this pilot ONLY choose to fly when they notice one of us non managerial pilots have a single turn day and they can call crew scheduling to steal the short flying schedule.

Lastly not a huge issue, but one that I don’t think management has heard already is that senior leadership needs to stop staying in the SBH house when crews are there. When you are in the middle of your crew rest and leadership comes home in the wee hours of the morning after a night of drinking and other uplifting activities, eventually you will have a pilot with enough balls to stand up to leadership and not fly the next morning. Because (total shocker here) senior TW leadership that is drunk and who knows what else, tends to make a LOT of noise upon reentering the SBH house and going to bed 30 minutes later.

I know there will be management emails, and “management scandal cover up“ responses below. They will read like the last, disappointed that someone has made these issues public rather than addressing them directly with management. But you guys had your chance to fix a lot of this and haven’t, so I personally believe that I owe it to the pilots that are thinking about coming to fly for Tradewind to post my "personal opinion" divorce letter here publicly! For my comrades that are left behind, I hope management spends more time fixing issues this go around rather than just trying short-term damage control. With a few simple changes you guys could stop the pilot hemorrhaging. Maybe create the “team atmosphere” you guys posted about.

I truly hope you guys “TW Management” will take this breakup feedback to heart. Inevitably it will enable you to help turn your sinking ship around. Based on the low time pilots you are hiring you have to be aware that you are losing pilots way faster than you can get them trained and then replaced 3 months later when they quit.

I do wish you all the best! And please stop posting the lies about how we are “all a team and that is what makes all the hard work worth it.” You know what makes all the hard work worth it? Decent coworkers, the paycheck and maybe even the occasional pat on the back! LOL “pat on the back from a 135 operator” I know, I know, lets not get crazy!

FormerTWPilot