Originally Posted by
p1ayn
employed at Comair for close to 7 years. This being my third airline. Without going into all the details and pro's vs con's, based on my personal exp...I would NOT advise coming here. PLENTY of opportunity out there right now with better options. Be patient and wait for another to call.
I would have to disagree with p1ayn. If you don't have another job offer, why not take it? If you get hired somewhere else, then you've lost nothing, and you may like it at Comair. There is no guarantee that you'll get hired at another carrier. (I know this is unlikely - especially in today's environment, but why take the chance?)
I've been at Comair for almost 12 years now. It's the only airline I've been employed by. While I don't doubt that FLAK's experience is true, I can say that you probably won't have it that bad. You will most likely be based in JFK for a while. You will be on reserve for a while and you won't like it. I've seen other airlines that have much better reserve systems. The pay here is average for the regionals. I am trying to get hired elsewhere as well.
On the optimistic side, we are going to be sold in the next year according to our management, Delta, and the airline analysts. No one is going to buy Comair without a growth plan in place (we don't have one now). The buyer will work out a deal with Delta that will specify a certain number of airframes over a set amount of time and we will start to grow again. We had 40+ people leave last month and that number is expected to grow. Training is top notch (according to people that have trained at other airlines) and is expected to do 2-4 classes of 14 or more a month starting in January. (I would expect that this would be based on finding people to show up for the classes!) Rumor has it that they are talking about upping the bonus to $5k to match some other carriers - ask about that when you call them back. With all that said, I would expect you to be able to move up fairly quickly and get off reserve faster than normal and if it keeps up, upgrades would be quicker as well - hopefully down around the 2 year point.
I couldn't blame you for going somewhere else if upgrade time was significantly less, but Comair is generally a good place to work, 99% of the people are great, and when our contract comes up in 4 more years, expect us to rise to the top of the pay scale again when we can negotiate without the clouds of bankruptcy hanging over our heads.
PM me with any other questions you may have. I'd be happy to try and answer them.