Azorian

i agree... if you are anywhere near the 500 hour mark, just instruct for a year or two. be free. no sense getting tied down into a massive repay for training contract in this hiring climate. arent your student loans ridiculous enough? why owe more to someone else? while you are stuck riding out a training contract you wont be able to pay back, guys who were instructing all that time are hiring to the regionals, collecting the bonus, inching that window ever closer to being closed all the while being senior to you

Boutique needs to scoop up some aspiring pilots as CSAs and in exchange for two years service as a CSA, cover the cost of their private, commercial single and instrument and then tangle those guys up into a contract.

i have no idea what the upper boutiquers were thinking when they rolled this out. I understand trying to retain personnel, but a two year paper lock down is ridiculous. You want quality people to stay you have to give an incentive. where is the incentive? if i stay ten years i get a $10,000 bonus?

Yes, there are a few boutique lifers it appears, i cant think of a dollar amount under $150,000 a year that would keep me at boutique for 4 or 5 years in this hiring climate. but lifers here are a rarity.

the rest of the pilot group hits their 1500 and bails out. I dont think they are leaving because they are necessarily unhappy... but because this is clearly a stepping stone type job. nobody in their right mind wants to look back in 4 years and say they spent nearly half a decade flying PC-12s for an EAS company while arguably the biggest hiring boom in aviation history was afoot.

i have learned quickly, this company does some things that leave you scratching your head. not just the two year contract... but stuff like spending a couple of thousand dollars to deadhead / hotel / uber an FO half way across america to cover one or two turns in good weather with a PIC who is single pilot capable - or setting you up with a hotel 30 miles from the airport because its $70 a night cheaper than the one 5 miles from the airport, but then paying $80 to ground trans you over there and back when the closer airport had a free shuttle service to start with - or expanding new routes in Pennsylvania and south texas at the same time without any apparent thought as to where the extra pilots, csa staff, aircraft etc are going to come from

Its nearing the end of October and i bet you anything there still is zero plan for getting skis and snowboards to Telluride Colorado.

Boutique is working this pilot hiring problem backwards... i know they look at these 500 hour folks and go "Where else are they gonna go?" so its easy to just eff em

but there are any number of 141 schools out there itching to give flight instructors $15,000 bonuses+/- to ink a one year deal while guaranteeing upwards of 100 hours per month

meanwhile your big reward for finishing out your time at boutique is that you dont owe them 14 grand, congratulations.