Originally Posted by
Mudhen200
Brad killed the HIMS program because of control. If a pilot were to have drug or alcohol problems, and get Alaska Airlines on the 5 O'clock news, he wants to be able to fire the pilot on the spot and remove the problem immediately for damage control. Image control above all else.
Whatever the reason he killed it, that's just a bad idea.
He shows me the text and I see that it's Ben asking for an update on how much orange was out there. This was around 0700 on a Friday and the most important thing on Ben's mind was how many orange lanyards were in the terminal. Image above all else.
That is incredibly petty, and, in my opinion, horribly misguided. If they wouldn't react like that, there would be no reason for you guys to wear them.
The only things these guys care about is image and the metal moving (preferably on time). If the metal stops moving, they pay attention in a hurry. If the image is in any way tarnished, they move like their hair is on fire.
That, I have come to believe, is a very true statement about Alaska and, sadly, a lot of airlines in general. And it bugs the heck out of me. I believe it's the reason that hiring has become heavily HR-driven with less pilot group input. It's the reason that the identity group annual meetings (WAI, NGPA, OBAP, and whatever else is out there) have become such big recruiting events. It's not that they expect to find the most qualified candidates there. It's because they need to show how committed they are to diversity and finding a new face for their next advertisement/PR event/web site/whatever.
I'm still hoping to get hired at Alaska for various reasons (although the clock is rapidly running out on that option), but I'm just not that excited about it anymore, and I'm not really trying that hard. After last year's meet & greet/promise to call "in the next few weeks" and subsequent unceremonious round-filing of the call list, I've sort of had it with them, and just don't much care.