Alpine Pilot

I’m simply going to say what my experience has been compared with what NatGeo wrote. Remember that we’re different people, with different experiences, at different points in the timeline of the company. I can only share how it's been for me. Not everybody is going to have a great experience here, I fully agree with that. As a veteran I’m a trained professional when it comes to b!tch!ng about the chain of command, and I’ve used that skill on occasion at Alpine when I didn’t understand some decisions. However, I really do like working here and I’m still having fun after almost 3 years or I simply would have moved on. I just have an outlook that most jobs will become what you make of them, so I try to make this a good one.

I've been here 3 years and I've had a lot of reserve days across all of them. As a junior 99 pilot I had plenty of reserve days where I either didn’t launch and went home, or did a quick out and back. It was the same even when I was a junior 1900 pilot after I got past 100 hrs of PIC time. Your results may vary, as this is pretty dependent on the staffing levels at the the base you fly at and how your assistant chief handles the scheduling. Also, in my time here I've never met a 20 year Alpine lifer that rides reserve 5 days a week. Perhaps he finally retired.

Honestly, I like our Chief. Both the previous one Chuck, and the current one Cole. I've had almost nothing but positive experiences both of them, but again that's only my experience. In talking to line pilots across all of the bases about the pros and cons of working here, the Chief and Assistant Chiefs are usually pretty high on the Pro list and not very often on the Con side.

Also, I never knew the owner was Mormon. It’s never come up around me nor has it been thrown in my face in any way. I really don’t care what religion he is because I don’t think it matters.

I didn’t know anything about Alpine when I applied. I called a phone number on a listing and asked to talk to a pilot because I had some questions about how the flight operations worked. The guy on the other end said something like “I’m a pilot here, ask away” so I asked questions about what Alpine does, what the schedule was like, where they fly, etc. Then I found out the guy I was chatting with was the Chief and he asked me to email my resume. I was offered a job a few days later.

The last resume I received via PM here on APC had solid qualifications so I passed it up the chain, and he also had a job offer within a few days. Unfortunately he didn’t take it because he couldn’t get here from Alaska fast enough before we stop training for peak. So if we need pilots they usually move pretty quickly, or if you just catch them at the right time they move quickly, but if they’re busy you might get missed. I agree this is one of the negatives. If the senior staff is busy we don’t have a recruiting person or team that can talk to all of the interested pilots, not that I’m aware of anyway, and we probably need to change that if we plan to grow much further.

Sometimes the schedule changes a lot, I know it can at SLC, and sometimes that can suck. Other times it's not that bad. If I have a vacation scheduled and approved I’ve never had a problem keeping it. If I’ve given advance notice I need certain days off for appointments at the VA or something, I’ve pretty much never had a problem with that. But when I look at the schedule and make a few plans based on what it shows for the next 3 weeks, and then it gets scrambled and I have to change plans, I can get annoyed. I didn’t lose vacation days, or requested days off, but my remaining days on vs days off might have changed during the schedule revision and now I need to change some of those plans I just made. It happens, but I can usually work things out in the end.

I’ve also never needed to call in sick, unless of course I was actually sick. I can usually just swap days off with other pilots, but that’s because I get along with most of them. I can also simply request a couple specific days off a few weeks in advance before the next schedule comes out. It doesn’t count against my vacation time if I just need a specific Wednesday off next month to go to an appointment or something because my assistant Chief will work around it if I’ve given him advance notice.

New Balance tennis shoes have never been a part of the uniform as far as I know, but they aren’t terribly strict on uniforms here anyway. That would have been a huge deal with some of my previous employers who would have done more than bother me. In the middle of winter we wear whatever we need to keep warm on the ramp with the uniform Polo and black pants somewhere underneath. In cold weather I wear fleece lined black pants under fleece lined snow pants with black Columbia winter boots that have ice treads. I also wear a big black bomber style jacket, over a light down jacket, over my polo and I put a warm hat on my head. In good weather the standard is black or grey company polo, black slacks, and black leather shoes. You can also wear a company ball cap if you want. And a reflective vest is required on the ramp.

I’ve never gotten one of those calls. If the weather is bad I tell UPS ops what their options are as far as where I can get in and at what time, and I also tell the assistant chief that runs my base what’s going on. If it’s legal to fly then I fly, if it’s not legal then I don’t fly. If I really don’t like something and I want to delay, but it’s technically legal weather, I talk to my assistant chief about what I’m uncomfortable with and discuss what I’m planning to do. I’ve never been scolded if I keep everybody in the loop.

Pretty sure UPS doesn’t bid these big contracts out monthly, or even annually, but I don’t handle that stuff so maybe I’m wrong. Also, the SLC base was shared with Ameriflight for years up until a couple weeks ago and our quality of life was pretty damn good and we had low attrition, so I guess I just don’t agree with this idea.

Oh yeah, I think we have a great maintenance team.