Let’s be real here for a minute. If you got hired at ATI 3+ years ago things are great. Wherever you came from and whatever your aviation aspirations are you got in at the right time. You are either a captain with enough seniority to get whatever days off you need 90% of the time. Or a super senior FO that gets whatever trips you want. You have the time and experience to leave whenever you want. You came at a time of exceptional growth. You make ~$200k per year and will take a pay cut anywhere you go for a few years as a FO save UPS and FedEx. No crash pads no commuting etc.
Most people came to ATI for fast upgrade, no commuting, long blocks of time off, and being able to turn 2 weeks of vacation into 6-8 weeks off. Aside from no commuting all of those things are gone now and you spend more days traveling to and from work (all though it is a company paid ticket).
Schedules are becoming more efficient. Where most lines were once one leg and done with the occasional two leg day, now two legs is the regular with occasional three leg days and longer duty days with deadheads tacked on. Again with seniority you can avoid the worst of it but without seniority it can be pretty rough. Flip flopping days and nights wasn’t so bad when it was one leg in the middle of the night. But now it’s two legs with a 4 hour sit in the middle. And yeah that’s what seniority gets you but where for the last three years we were adding 10-13 planes a year I only see one more on the books this year for sure.
Always subject to change but the days of rapid growth seem to be gone for a while. We have hired over 70 FOs with zero Captain upgrades.
I’m not trying to bash ATI this is just how it is these days. Everyone has different goals in their careers. I’d rather be an FO at ATI than flying pax anywhere. But if you don’t mind pax going to an LLC or mainline will net you more money, faster upgrades, front side of the clock schedules, better work rules, better retirement, and opportunity to make big money for picking up trips than coming to or staying at ATI. Want to work on days off for extra cash at ATI, expect to be paid straight pay. No %200 or %300. And because very few lines are over or even close to MMG you only get the daily rate which is sad. Imagine flying 20 hours in three days and only getting paid 12 hours because you didn’t credit enough during your days on.
If you don’t want to work to hard and don’t mind back side of the clock ATI is great. Growth will probably resume when airplanes start making it through conversion again. Amazon is talking about adding A330’s or 777’s to their network. Maybe ATI will fly then maybe not. We are working on a new contract to hopefully fix a lot of the complaints, add more work rules, get a respectable retirement, and raises of course. Everyone here is hopeful all of these things will happen sooner rather than later. If you’ve been here for a while it’s a bit easier to be patient and enjoy the ride than a new hire or junior captain getting abused with no end in sight while all your peers are going mainline or UPS/FedEx. In 10 years we could be a 5000+ pilot group with amazon badges. In 10 years we could also still be one of the many ACMI airlines all fighting for pieces of the same pie.
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