onemoretogo

I know there’s an active post about Swift Air but I felt this needs a whole new separate post. I have been here for a short time and I’m on my way out and for the love of aviation and respect to fellow pilots I feel I need to warn everyone as much as I can about this place to STAY AWAY.

Swift Air is a breeding ground for incidents, violations, and God forbid, an accident in the near future. There are some good people trying to do the right thing but are overwhelmed with a long company culture of cutting deals, violating FAR’s, and just all around being scum about things.

Where to begin…

My journey started at Swift when their recruiter lied about every aspect of the job. I’m not sure who’s recruiting presently, but if you speak to Richard Constanza Watts beware. Everything I was told was a lie. Everything you will be told will probably be a lie too. Pay, benefits, days off, bases, schedules, everything. I came to find out various colleagues were made the same promises and made life changing decisions leaving jobs based on these conditions to find out we had all been lied to. If this recruiter ever received any warning or communication from the company about his actions is still uncommunicated.

I’ll start from the beginning… training.

2 days before your class date you will receive about 100+ hours worth of CBT’s that you do not get paid for and you are required to finish before your first day of class. When you arrive to indoc everyone complains they were not able to complete the CBT’s on time and the first week is spent on your computer clicking away through the “required” CBT’s. Absolutely nothing else is done during this week.

I have been at various airlines in my life and this has been the absolute worst training program I have been a part of. Be ready to teach yourself a 737 because there is no instruction program, no curriculum and no outlined schedule as to what to expect from your training.

If you are someone who has never flown a Boeing plane I feel sorry for you because no one will teach you anything. Myself and various others already had experience to fall back on so it wasn’t as critical for us, but a lot of people struggled through this so called training program because there is no guidance what so ever. Every once in a while the FAA will show up to supervise and Swift will magically change the location of their ground school class and pretend they’re teaching and have a busy day all of a sudden. If the FAA is not supervising, the entire day is spent doing nothing. Clicking away through about 60 minutes total worth of slides for the entire day and then a very confused and aggravated group of pilots asking questions no one has the answer to. This goes on through the entire time you spend in ground school. Just killing time.

When you come to an airline one of the biggest concerns is your seniority and where you fall on that list, am I right? Not here, seniority is inexistent. Seniority at Swift is defined by how much the manager of crew scheduling likes you and how many FAR’s you break or what deals you cut in order to save Swift from scheduling jams or things they got themselves into.

You are never assigned a seniority number and you don’t get ID’s and KCM until weeks after you are done with ground school, so forget about going home on the weekends.

Something worth mentioning is security training, where you are told you are responsible to screen passengers and you are forced to pat down your fellow classmates in order to “pass” security training. It’s not a simple pat down, no, the person giving the class will not pass you until you touch your classmates’ crotch area and buttocks. Unheard of in any airline training and in my opinion completely disrespectful.

Do not believe any timeline you are given for training because it’s all a lie. You will be told ground training is 2 weeks when it’s really 3. You will be told you’ll have off a couple days and then they’ll fly you the next day to SIMS or you will be told you’re scheduled for SIMS ASAP and you’ll sit around for weeks at home with no response from the company.

I could go one but I’m sure I’ve given you an idea of it. SIM training is nothing better. No standardization on flows, call outs, procedures, nothing. Every sim instructor teaches you their own way of doing things and whatever the Swift Air way of doing things is never gets transmitted. On the line it’s the same thing. “I do this” - “Oh but I do it like this” - “No, I don’t do that, I do this”. Absolutely no standardization.

Moving on… for starters, the profile on APC about bases is incorrect. Swift Air has 2 bases. Phoenix and Miami. Swift also works with home basing and TDY basing that benefits a lot of people but most people out of training will get a temporary TDY base where you’ll be flown mostly in Miami until you get a hard base which in a lot of cases is Miami until you threaten to resign because you were promised a home base and then you’ll get your way. If there’s anything positive about Swift Air is their policy to positive space you where they want you to fly all the time. So as far as commuting that’s a great relief. The downside is sometimes they’ll take one of your days off to count as a “Travel Day” and you have to call back and argue to get your day off back.

In the past 2 months we’ve had a tail strike, a plane land long and go off a runway, and a crew almost take off from a taxi way in EWR. If these facts don’t say something about the training and standardization of Swift Air I don’t know how else to prove my point. Unfortunately, these are the only public incidents, only God knows what other incidents happened that Swift was able to hide under the rug.

I have met some good people here but it is definitely a complex group. It seems most people here have never been at a regular scheduled airline and have hopped around 135’s and/or charters their entire lives. Not that there’s anything wrong with this but it brings forth a culture of people that are used to doing things a certain way that’s well… not the way 121 scheduled airlines work. Mix this group with a complete lack of standardization and you get problems. In my opinion, a lot of people here can’t go anywhere else because they have too many skeletons in their closet. Skeletons that they keep taking out every time they come in to work.

It is well known that pilots here constantly break FAR’s to cut deals with scheduling. You have a broken plane and writing it up will cause a delay or a cancelled flight? Scheduling will probably offer you a lot of money so you don’t ground it and keep it off the books. You’re about to time out and there’s no other pilot to replace you? Here comes scheduling with a juicy offer to get you to break your 117’s and keep flying so as to not cancel the flight.

This previous month a lot of pilots had their pay screwed up. What do you think was the reason? Since we recently switched to a software that’s actually tracking our flight and duty limits it wouldn’t allow pilots to keep flying illegally on paper. So the brave and resourceful manager of crew scheduling realized you could just delete flights or not record them so it still looks legal in the books, but those pilots that flew all those illegal hours still wanted their their money… what a dilemma.

I feel it’s necessary to point out the manager of crew scheduling is named David Speaks. He has been fired from all of his previous airlines for bad crew handling. Yet, here he is at Swift. This is the person responsible for bribing you into flying over your limit, trying to get you to fly when you’re illegal, and retaliating on you if you ever let him down. Yup. Can’t get up and get to the airport in 30 minutes to fly something illegal? You’ll start getting terrible assignments from now on. Crew scheduling works assigning the better trips or flights to their favorites or the people that get them out of jams. Again, seniority is completely irrelevant here and it's all about how well you get along with the scheduling department.

There’s a group of pilots that always take the deals and “save” scheduling from jams. These pilots will get paychecks that are about 50% to 60% higher than yours.

Same thing goes for MX issues. Yes, if you don’t write up your plane and keep it flying even when you have no go items that should be taken care of… You’ll receive special compensation for “helping the company out”.

It’s terribly sad that Swift Air supports this behavior and rewards it, while the people that are following the rules get underpaid and under cutted.

Same goes for flying the line… Like I said before, there is a very diverse group of pilots that come from too many different places. If you mix this with a complete lack of standardization and disrespect for any sort of rules, you get a group of pilots where no one is speaking the same language.

Procedures are constantly done ineffectively, few guys know how to properly use the box, and weight and balance is completely disregarded. Manipulation of weights, loads, fuel, and pax is a constant practice to make the flights look legal on paper when it isn’t. And no one’s doing anything about it.

For instance, the Miami operation is basically a freight business. The ground handlers fudge the loads to hide the fact you’re taking thousands of extra lbs of cargo on board and then OPS gets on your case for wanting to unload bags. Like I mentioned before, it’s a standard practice to make the loads look legal when it’s not.

A lot of the check airmen are only check airmen because they were friends with the chief pilot from a previous life. That said, the chief pilot is ALSO a check airmen… I don’t think I’ve been at an airline where a double role is assigned like this and a chief pilot performs both duties…

I have had very little interaction with the current chief pilot so I cannot give a full experience, but the general moral is that he is unhelpful and vengeful. Again, this is only what the other pilots say…

Just a few last things worth mentioning as far as scheduling goes…You are not assigned a fix scheduled you are assigned days off and on. Some of these assignments are 16 day trips. It is a lie that there are only 3-5 day trips as mentioned in the other thread. A lot of pilots are constantly working on a daily basis until their legal rests come, only to keep working after that.

In a lot of cases you are assigned a 6 day trip for instance, then they’ll say you need your 30 hours rest which they’ll give to you in a remote city somewhere in the US, and when that’s done you’ll be assigned flying for the next 6 days and so on. Crews are constantly worked to their limits.

Sure, a lot of people say it’s growing pains, but the company hasn’t communicated any direction, plan, or outlook for Swift. There are constant rumors about pay raises, better work conditions, bidding, lines.. you name it.. that are never followed through.

Almost everyone here is unhappy, the morale is terrible, the bad practices and the complete lack for regulations makes this place a truly terrible airline to work for. In my opinion, it is a miracle our planes are still flying everyday.

To anyone who even looked at Swift as a possibility, I cannot stress enough how much of a mistake you are making if you choose this airline. If you’re at a regional, no matter how bad you think you have it, you’re better off than here.

There are multiple pilot’s I’ve heard have gone to the FAA and I myself have written my letter. If anything good will come from it I don’t know. I just know I am incredibly relieved and happy to be leaving.

I don’t know if there’s hope for Swift. It’s terribly managed and the managers of certain departments are incredibly corrupt humans. That on top of terrible pay for a 737, low morale, terrible MX, lack of benefits, no quality of life and complete lack of standardization should be enough for anybody to stay away.

Just my 2 cents…